


Not Without You

by JJK



Series: Stucky Fix-it Series [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers: Endgame
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Flashbacks to adventures with howling commandos during the war, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Endgame, what happens after steve has returned the stones, winter soldier themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-08-23 04:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20237026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJK/pseuds/JJK
Summary: After Steve Rogers returns the infinity stones, he travels back to 1947 to rescue Bucky and take down Hydra once and for all.a.k.a. my attempt to write a canon compliant version of events which gives stevebucky stans closure and let's us rewatch endgame without feeling despair.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my endgame fix-it fic:[The End of the Line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18637198/chapters/44195887). I recommend reading that first, but it isn't completely necessary.

Steve staggered to his feet, ignoring the flares of agony that shot through every joint as he moved. His shield arm was broken. Searing pain burned from the deep gash that cut through muscle to the bone and though his hand remained gripped to the handle of the shield, his fingers were numb. He tugged on the straps, ensuring the shield was lashed securely to his arm, gritting his teeth and wincing through the pain. It would heal, he could feel an ache deep in his bones as they began to knit themselves back together already – like intense growing pains that made him want claw the bones right out of his skin. But it would take a while. The first few hits he blocked were going to be agony.

He spat blood and dirt from his mouth and lifted his gaze to survey the battlefield. His team were down; Tony and Thor lay battered and bruised in the dirt. The others were buried in the rubble and remains of the compound. He was alone.

Across the scarred landscape Thanos stood, presumptively triumphant. His armies swelled behind him and Steve watched with a sinking heart as more and more ships were conjured from thin air, spilling masses of alien troops on the shores of the Hudson. The odds weren’t in his favour, but Steve never did know when to back down from a fight. This is what he’d been made for. The stones were trapped somewhere under the compound; all Steve had to do was hold the line. He’d die doing it; that Steve knew for certain. He could only hope that he’d buy enough time for the others to regroup.

Steve had a made peace with his death a long time ago, when he stared at the arctic ice and sent the Valkyrie crashing into it at highspeed; destroying the bombs, and himself in the process. He’d never meant to survive. It was the age old question; why couldn’t Steve have jumped from the plane before it crashed? Wasn’t there an autopilot feature? Surely there must have been some other way? But Steve didn’t want another way. Bucky was dead and the war was all but won. What would be left for Steve when the other GIs were shipped back home? He knew he’d never be allowed to retire. There would always been wars to fight, symbols to stand for, money to raise. Steve had been flaunted as a dancing monkey for the government once, and he knew he couldn’t face doing that again. Better to go down in glory; it was the only peace Steve ever hoped to get.

Only he didn’t die. He kept on not dying, not in New York, not in Sokovia, and then when Thanos had snapped half of the universe from existence, Steve still hadn’t died. Why? _Why_? He’d pleaded and cursed with gods old and new, with the very universe itself. Steve would have traded his life for those snapped souls in a heartbeat; but the sacrifice wasn’t his to make. Natasha. Then Tony. And somehow Steve was still alive.

It was like Tony had said, the worst thing wasn’t watching your friends die; the worst thing was that you had survived.

Steve couldn’t face any of them anymore; not Pepper, Sam, Clint, Banner. Not even Bucky. Guilt from everything he’d failed to prevent broiled and seethed in his very bones. With every passing day Bucky further integrated himself into the modern world, but Steve felt trapped in the past. He couldn’t move on; not with the consequences of his mistakes riddled throughout history like rot. He had to go back. He had to put things right.


	2. Austria 1943 / New York 1947

_Bucky - Austria, 1943_

Bucky didn’t remember much of what happened after the tank rolled over the lip of his foxhole and all hell broke loose. He used to think that was such a cliched expression, all hell breaking loose, what did that even mean? But when floods of Hydra soldiers stormed towards them with futuristic weapons capable of disintegrating men in a blast; what term was there for that other than hell?

They were marched all day and night without respite - those who stumbled and fell behind were shot without mercy – until they reached a large prison camp on the outskirts of a forest somewhere in the depths of Europe. Bucky wasn’t even sure which country they were in anymore. Not that it really mattered.

The Hydra soldiers crammed them into cages like cattle and they were left there, in the dark and gloomy holding cells; given a few mouldy loaves and canteens of unclean water to share between them at intervals which Bucky supposed marked the passing of days. He quickly lost count. Conversation was sparse, men tried to cheer each other up with songs at first, but most of them quickly retreated into the darkness of their thoughts; mourning lost brothers at arms, and missing home.

Bucky tried not to think of Steve. Imaging what trouble he was brewing for himself back in Brooklyn was too painful to think of. Bucky wondered if he’d tried to enlist again, if he’d gotten himself in trouble for it. Would he have taken a job down at the factory like Bucky suggested? Or maybe he’d wound up at the magazine company like he’d always wanted; drawing adverts and propaganda posters. There’d been a new brand of comic released, a few copies of which had found their way overseas and into the foxholes of the American soldiers: Captain America; an over the top superhero meant to inspire people to buy war bonds back home. Bucky didn’t know why, but the comic always reminded him of Steve. Maybe it was just the longing to laugh at the absurd storylines with him, or because he knew Steve would like the artwork. Maybe it was something about the Captain’s stubbornness and the way he’d hold up bloodied fists and declare ‘I can do this all day’.

There was a rumour that Captain America was actually real. That the army had really made a super soldier who was bullet proof, who could lift a ton with one hand, no problem, who was super-fast, super-agile, super-heroic. But if that was true, why was he touring the states in tights, and not out here fighting with them?

Some days they were forced into chain gangs and worked until they dropped in the munitions factory; creating weapons for the enemy. If they refused they were beaten, or worse.

Some days people were taken. There was never an explanation. They never came back.

The days blurred together. Bucky gave up hope of ever going home again. With the weapons Hydra had, how could the allies ever hope to push them back into Germany? Hydra would sweep the globe, dropping the bombs Bucky had helped package. What hope was there?

Then they took him.

He didn’t resist – just let his head hang as they dragged him from the cage and marched him down the corridors. Their black masks were impassive as they strapped him to a metal table. It was then that Bucky realised he’d miscalculated. They weren’t going to give him a quick death. He should have put up a fight and thrown a few punches, tried to take a few of the guards down with him. He thrashed as they fastened thick leather restraints around his arms and legs, pinning him down, completely at their mercy. It was too late.

They shot him up with something and everything went black and hazy.

In between the flashes of agony which coursed and seared through him – screaming until he thought his lungs were burst or he’d rupture something his jaw – in the brief moments of lucidity when they weren’t manipulating him mind, making him see impossible visons and question everything he thought he knew about himself – Bucky focused on Steve. On blue eyes, a thatch of blonde hair and a nose too big for his face.

## ***

_Steve - New York, October 1947_

Steve woke in a panicked sweat. His heart was racing, his breath came short, and he bolted upright with a strangled cry on his lips. As the details of Peggy’s spare room came into focus, Steve realised he’d been dreaming again. He tensed as he waited to see if he’d woken Peggy up with his outburst, but no sound came from her room, so Steve slumped back into his pillows and took deep calming breaths. The details of the nightmare ebbed from his mind like water down a drain, but he already knew them inside out. The same dream had plagued him for a week: he stormed the Hydra base in Switzerland and found Bucky exactly as he had in Austria, but when he reached the table to break the straps – Bucky disintegrated into ash.

Steve swung his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head into his hands, letting his breathing even out. The dream had vanished, but the worry haunted him. He’d been back for over a week and so far he’d accomplished exactly nothing. What if he couldn’t change the past? What if he only ended up making things worse?

The room began to feel claustrophobic and small. Steve stood and paced, keeping his hands clenched in fists by his sides as he fought the urge to punch through a wall. He donned a pair of khaki slacks and a thin white cotton t-shirt, missing the sturdy trainers and moisture wicking material of the 21st century as he laced up a pair of soft boots. He tip-toed lightly across the landing passed Peggy’s door and snuck downstairs, stepping out into the cold morning air. A list mist rolled through the trees and fields that bounded the quiet street and the sky was mauve with the promise of a bright dawn. Steve stretched to touch his toes and work the cracks out of his back before sprinting off through the trees on his habitual morning run. He stuck to forest tracks and trails, steering clear of the main roads or highways where he’d be forced to explain what he was up to; recreational jogging wasn’t common in the forties – unless you were a college athlete or in the army, you had no business taking a ten mile run every morning. Steve tore through the first ten miles in twenty minutes, heading north with no purpose other than burning his fears and frustrations into the dust under his boots. He found the Hudson and followed it upstate with the sun rising behind him and his thoughts calming as he settled into the familiar sensation of his feet hitting the ground and the reassuring burn in his muscles.

He came to a clearing on the river and stopped to catch his breath, taking stock of his surroundings. The Avengers compound would be built up here, someday. Steve didn’t think he’d run quite far enough to be standing on the same patch of land as the platform would one day be located, but the same trees lined the bank of the same river and the view was familiar enough. He staggered to the water’s edge and looked out over the choppy current which sparkled under the mid-morning sun.

_“Promise me one thing,”_ Bucky had said, as they stood together before the same river, seventy six years from now.

_“Anything.”_

_“Find him. Me. Don’t let me live through that again.”_

Steve closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. “I’m trying, pal. I really am.” Steve told the empty air and suddenly felt very small and very alone. A cloud passed over the sun, momentarily casting him in shadow and sending a chill creeping to his core. He knew a mission of this magnitude took time to plan and they only had one shot to get it right, but Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that he was running out of time.

In that moment the weight of all the grief Steve had been carrying washed over him. He missed Sam’s cheerful optimism and quipped remarks that could lift his spirits in an instant. He missed the way Natasha could distract him with anything from sparring to tearing apart his taste in films. He missed Tony, the way he always challenged Steve to be better. He missed Bucky – god, it was like an ache in his soul.

Steve felt like he’d been grieving for a century. He’d lost Bucky three times now, Sam twice. In the five years following the snap, he’d never really gotten over them. It turned out choosing to leave them behind this time didn’t make it any easier. Especially not when he was still reeling from Nat and Tony’s death, and the guilt that ate him raw. Steve staggered towards a tree to prevent himself from falling to his knees, knowing that if he went down he might never find the strength to stand again.

_“Listen close, Steven,” _

Steve flinched as his mother’s bloodied face swam into his mind. In his memory her calloused, work-worn hands cupped his face and wiped his tears from his eyes. He was still grieving for her too, even after all this time. He’d often wondered what she’d make of him if she’d been here to see of all his mistakes splashed throughout time. He hoped she’d be proud, but honestly, he wasn’t sure. He closed his eyes imaging her touch and recalling the words that had been burned into his heart, the mantra that had kept him going for so long.

_“You **always** stand up.” _


	3. New York 1947 / Belgium 1944

_Steve, New York, October 1947_

Steve tried to immerse himself back into life in the forties. He caught a ride into the city with Peggy one morning and strolled around his old haunts, staring up at his and Bucky’s old building and noting the numerous alleyways he’d been beaten up in. With a brown fedora pulled low over his brow and a thick winter jacket to hide his bulk, Steve passed through the streets without drawing attention to himself. The skyline was far less cluttered, and the sunlight still streamed through the windows in Grand Central station. He took the subway out to Queens and walked around the campus of the Stark Expo which was practically empty, mid-morning on a Thursday. The giant iron globe still sat centre stage, though the pavilion where Steve had finally managed to enlist was now a food stand. Steve bought himself a hot dog for five cents and wondered how inflation had ever been allowed to get so out of hand.

When the memories crowding at his mind began to get too much, Steve hitched a ride with an old truck driver back out to Peggy’s house in White Plains. The driver didn’t ask any questions nor offer up any conversation and Steve was happy to let the miles roll under the tyres in silence. He hopped out when the highway forked off towards Connecticut and walked the rest of the way from there. It was early afternoon when Steve rounded the corner back into Peggy’s street. A light breeze swirled through the golden leaves that crunched on the sidewalk and someone walking across the street waved a greeting. Steve doffed his hat in return as he jogged up the steps to Peggy’s porch. He was turning the key in the lock when the low rumble of an engine roared down the street. Steve tensed, automatically lowering his centre of gravity, ready for a fight. But when he turned on his heels he saw nothing more sinister than a shiny silver sports car skidding to a halt outside Peggy’s house.

“So, it is true.” Howard stepped out of his car and slammed the door shut. He grinned up at Steve with a smile that was so like Tony’s, yet so different. For a moment Steve could only stare. He’d forgotten how young Howard had looked, or, rather, he’d never realised it before. Howard had always seemed far more worldly and grownup than Steve had ever felt, but now Steve saw him for the arrogant yet insecure young man he really was.

As Howard walked around the bonnet of his car, Steve unwittingly recalled the stomach-churning video of Bucky shooting Howard through his car window, and shivered. He’d compartmentalised the Winter Soldier’s actions so thoroughly that it had been easy to think of that Howard as wholly different person to the one standing in front of him. It had been the same with all of Tony’s quipped remarks about his father’s negligence and how much Tony had felt hated by him. Steve stared at Howard, wondering how on earth he went from here to there.

“Good to have you back, buddy.” Howard jogged up onto the porch and Steve found himself standing awkwardly in Howard’s embrace.

He gave a Howard a pat on the back for forms sake, and stepped back, forcing a neutral expression on his face.

“We searched high and low for you, y’know? I didn’t wanna stop looking,”

Steve just smiled.

“Any chance you brought the shield back with you?”

“Sorry. It was destroyed.” Steve said honestly.

“Well that’s a drag. No other metal on earth quite like it, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’m not looking for a new shield.”

“I know, I know,” Howard waved away Steve’s point before it could even be made. “Peggy told me. You’re going looking for Barnes and you need my help.”

“I need a plane, if you have one. And a loan for some expenses.”

“I guess the army don’t give backpay to the dead,” Howard laughed. “Sure thing. Anything for Captain America.” He grinned.

Steve grimaced.

“Look, I gotta get to a meeting in the city, but anything you need, just give me a shout. Jarvis’ll help you out if I’m not around.”

Steve was going to need to adjust to Jarvis as a person, not and Tony’s computer program. So far he’d been thrown by every mention of the name.

“You need a place to stay? I’ve got Penthouse in Brooklyn that’s not being used. I guess they let your old apartment?”

“Thanks, I’ll…” Steve faltered, it felt strange to be asking Stark for so much help already, but Steve knew he couldn’t stay with Peggy forever. She’d moved on, as Steve knew she would have done. Whenever Peggy was lucid enough for lengthy conversations in DC, she’d gushed about her children and her grandchild: Steve wasn’t here to get in the way of her life. He needed to get from under her feet as soon as possible and let her get back to living it. “I’ll be fine staying with Peggy for now,” Steve assured Stark. “but –”

“Yeah,” Howard laughed. “I’m sure you will. Enjoy the fondue,” he beamed, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“No, it’s nothing like that -” Steve tried to protest, but Howard was already sitting inside his car, revving the engine. He gave Steve a salute through the window and then he was speeding away with a rumble of horsepower and a screech of tyres. 

Steve was left standing on the porch. He watched Howard’s car disappear out of sight and found himself staring at the street for a long time afterwards. There was going to be lots of things he was going to have to adjust to. A young Howard Stark was definitely going to be one of them.

=

“Good news,” Peggy announced one evening, about a week after Steve’s encounter with Stark. “Howard has a plane we can use and, thanks to Dugan’s links with the Italian Resistance, we might be able to borrow some trucks.” She shrugged her coat off by the front door and immediately joined Steve in the ‘war room’: Peggy’s dining room which had been completely given over to planning for the mission. The dining table was covered with a large map of Switzerland and its surrounding area. Wooden blocks and toy soldiers that Steve had picked up from a toy store marked out various locations on the map.

“Great.” Steve looked up as she entered. Now they were planning in earnest Steve’s frustrations had ebbed. Whilst still officially ‘missing in action’, Steve’s help was limited to what he could accomplish from home, but he was just glad to be doing something productive.

“How are the uniforms coming?”

He held up the air-force blue jacket to show Peggy the swiss military insignia he was carefully stitching into it. “They won’t stand up to scrutiny, but they’re passable.” It had been a while since Steve had had to mend or sew anything by hand, but he was pleased to find he still remembered how. It felt like another lifetime that he’d sat by his mother’s knee learning how to patch the holes on trousers he always seemed to be scuffing. How many times had he had to take up the hems on second-hand pairs of slacks? Or try to tailor his shirts so they didn’t drown him? Not to mention the times he’d helped Bucky alter the lapels on old jackets so Bucky could try and keep up with the latest fashions; the endless stitching and repairs to their uniforms after battle; or harrowing times they’d had to stitch each other’s wounds, too far behind enemy lines for more competent medical assistance. In the future sewing had been little more than a hobby for most people. In the thirties and forties, it had been a survival skill.

“Fine work,” Peggy admired. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?” She phrased it like a question, but Steve had come to know it was a statement of fact.

He heard the tap running and Peggy striking a match to light the stove. One thing Steve hadn’t counted on missing from the 21st century, was electric kettles. Boiling water the old-fashioned way took forever, and Steve had practically finished stitching the shoulder boards onto another jacket by the time Peggy returned with two steaming cups of tea. She placed her cup on the corner of the map and began to study the geography intently.

“Howard can drop you, Sawyer and Pinkerton right over the Lodge,” she moved more toy soldiers into position, “whilst ostensibly flying to Milan for the weekend. Dugan managed to talk Mortia and Jones out of retirement; they’ve agreed to stay with Stark and provide back-up only if we need it.”

That was good news. Steve knew both Mortia and Jones had families by now, and whilst he didn’t want to risk their lives in this mission, he accepted that they needed all the help they could get – plus Steve was looking forward to seeing them again. It been far, far too long.

“Dugan and I will link up with his Italian contacts here,” Peggy added a block to a small town on the edge of Lake Como, “before driving the trucks to meet you. In November, the roads will likely be snowed in. It might take us a few days to reach you; in which time you should have been able to gather enough reconnaissance on the Lodge to plan our way in. The whole area is prime grazing pasture during the summer months, there should be shepherds’ huts or cottages you can shelter in.”

Steve joined Peggy in staring at the map. He tried to picture the contour lines as snowy peaks and treacherous terrain, tried to remember how bitterly cold spending a few nights in a shepherd’s hut during winter could be. But all he saw was how close they were to taking the lodge; how close they were to Bucky.

“Steve,” Peggy glanced up at him. “I need you to promise me that you won’t be reckless. Until Dugan and I arrive with a way out – you’re strictly on a recon mission, do you understand? This is our only shot and we can’t afford take any risks. If you spook them and they move Barnes, we might never find him again.”

“I know,” Steve clenched his jaw and dug his fingers into the edge of the table.

“Alright.” Peggy shot him a smile, not looking completely satisfied, but at least reassured. “Oh, I almost forgot. I got you these,” she pushed a stack of identity papers towards him.

“What are they?” Steve leafed through them: a birth certificate, and enlistment papers, all for someone named ‘Roger Joseph Grant’, born in Brooklyn in 1916. “I didn’t think we were going undercover for this? Stark’s flying us back, isn’t he?”

“He is. These aren’t for the mission; They’re for afterwards.”

Steve didn’t follow.

“They’re for you.” Peggy told him. “I picked names you’d have no trouble remembering – thought Roger Stevens was a little too on the nose.” She added with a smile. 

“A fake identity.” The realisation dawned on him slowly.

“Yes. I thought about what you said, about not wanting to tell Colonel Phillips, and you were right. The moment they find out you’re alive, the government will be crawling all over you; doing tests, experiments, god knows what else. You won’t be allowed to retire. America’s ‘greatest soldier’ will be sent all over the world to spread American ‘justice’ and ‘democracy’,” she said the words with some trace of distaste. “After everything you’ve been through, you deserve a chance at peace. I thought these would help.”

“What about Bucky?” Steve asked, forgetting that in this timeline the Winter Soldier had barely begun to wreak havoc.

“Barnes will be another MIA soldier returning home a few years late. As will you. There’s more of them than you would imagine, especially with prisoners of war scattered across Europe and the Pacific.”

Suddenly the papers in his hands felt a great deal heavier. Steve thought he understood what Peggy wasn’t saying, and he knew, for the identity to hold up to a lifetime’s worth of scrutiny, this wasn’t just a faked document from SSR, this was a real person’s identity that he would be stealing.

“Who was he?”

Peggy gave Steve a sad smile. “Nathan Hale. Born in Brooklyn. Only child. Orphan.”

“Sounds familiar.” Steve muttered.

“MIA since 1943.”

“What happens if he turns up?”

“He won’t. He was killed or captured with the rest of the 107th. His body was never recovered, but if he didn’t make it out with you and the others… well, you saw what happened to the facility…” Peggy trailed off.

“He didn’t make it.” Steve dropped his head. He felt crushed. How many other people had died during the escape, or had been killed before he could get there?

“You can’t save everyone, Steve.”

He knew that. By, god, did he know that. It used to be something he could handle. Acceptable strategic losses were part and parcel of warfare; but the body count was only getting higher. “I wish I could.” Steve swallowed and stared at the birth certificate. He hadn’t given much thought to life in this timeline beyond rescuing Bucky and burning Hydra to the ground. For the first time he truly let himself think about it; living life as Roger Grant, with a house in the suburbs not unlike the one he was in, planning weekend trips to the mountains instead of missions. Growing out his beard so people wouldn’t recognise him. Lying in on Sundays without having anyone to report to. Living without the guilt of Thanos, or regret of leaving Peggy behind. Steve wasn’t sure he knew how. Unbidden, Ultron’s words came back to him, mocking, and haunting; _‘Captain America. God's righteous man. Pretending you could live without a war.’_ Could Steve find purpose in peacetime?

His chest tightened and his breath quickened. It almost felt like the onset of an asthma attack; only the serum had purged that from his lungs. He realised he was crumpling the papers in his hands, and hastened to drop them, splaying his hands on the table and focusing on controlling his breathing. He had to believe he could live without war, he had to believe he was better than that. He’d lifted the hammer, hadn’t he?

The war was over, and in time he’d learn to live with everything that had happened, with everything that he’d done. But he wasn’t done yet.

## ***

_Bucky, Belgium, Early 1944_

“Grubs up, Cap.” Bucky carried two tins of heated C-Rations over to where Steve was perched on a boulder, sketching in last rays of the fading sunlight. They were holed up in a barn somewhere behind enemy lines in Belgium, waiting for orders to take down the Hydra supply facility a few clicks north. It was a picturesque part of the world, rolling fields and tall thin trees that swayed in the wind; flat as far as the eye could see with cloud formations bunched on the horizon like cotton candy mountains, turned pink by the sun. But for all its beauty, Bucky was surprised to see a familiar rusty fire escape and brownstone buildings taking shape on the page of Steve’s notebook.

“What’ya drawing?” he asked redundantly, he wanted to hear Steve say it.

“Home.” Steve added shading to the window in the building opposite and the white blob took shape as a sunlight glinting off the glass; making everything suddenly look real and 3-dimensional. Goosebumps pricked on Bucky’s arm. He’d almost forgotten that view, but staring into Steve’s pencil sketch he was right back there; legs dangling off the edge of the fire escape as he felt the wind brush across his face, hearing the sounds of the city thrum around him and Steve who’s small frame was bundled in three coats so he didn’t catch a chill. Then Steve closed the notebook and tucked it back in his pocket, he reached to take his dinner from Bucky, and Bucky was shocked to find himself standing on scrubby grass without a skyscraper in sight.

It had been all too easy to lose himself in memories lately. Ever since Zola and that woman had messed with his brain Bucky’s thoughts were all jumbled together. ‘Then’ was difficult to differentiate from ‘now’. He had to look for visual clues to prevent himself from becoming disorientated. Steve was the biggest fucking visual clue there was; ‘then’ he’d been skinny; ‘now’ he was 240lbs of all-American muscle. His nose was still broken, they couldn’t take that away from him, and his eyes were still the same blue pools of light that had pulled Bucky back from the brink every time he thought he might slip under that Hydra scientist’s spell.

Bucky still wasn’t sure how he felt about what they’d done to Steve. They’d made him a target, that was all. And given him a mandate to wade into fights he had no chance of winning. Seriously, like his hero complex had needed that kind of justification. It had been hard enough to look out for him in the backstreets of Brooklyn where the guys he picked fights with were no bigger than Bucky; now he was supposed to follow Steve into battle against actual armies with weaponry the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Yeah, you could say Bucky was a little bitter.

He pushed the thoughts down and perched on the boulder beside Steve, staring out across the golden fields, savouring the moment of peace before they were called back into action.

“Do you think we’ll ever get to go back?” Bucky still didn’t fancy their chances against Hydra; not even after seeing Steve fight. He was brilliant; unstoppable. But Steve fought fair, and that was the problem with the bad guys – they never did.

“I think Mr Lebowitz might have rented it in our absence.” Steve replied, pragmatic as ever.

“To who? Isn’t everyone over here dying in a trench?” Bucky tried to joke. “We could rent a new place – somewhere bigger, that doesn’t have a broken widow latch that leaks in the winter,”

“Or cupboard doors that open of their accord in the middle of the night.” Steve agreed.

“We could get somewhere with a view of the water, or one right next to Ebbets Field so we can hear the dodger’s games for free. Might get our window smashed when Camilli hits it out of the park – but it’d be worth it,” Bucky laughed.

Steve looked heartbroken and Bucky’s laugh died on his tongue. Of course, Steve might want to shack up with that English broad, Peggy. Bucky’s stomach turned, and not from the taste of the stew.

“Didn’t you hear? Camilli was traded.” Steve told him mournfully.

“What? No!” Bucky was outraged. “When?”

“Last year. To the Giants, no less.”

“Is that meant to be a fucking joke?” Bucking was seething, but somehow Steve just found it funny. He clapped Bucky on the shoulder and laughed, a deep belly laugh the likes of which Bucky hadn’t heard in a long time – scratch that, with Steve’s bigger frame, and with the asthma gone from his lungs, Bucky had never heard Steve laugh quite like that.

“Last I heard he hadn’t report yet; refusing to play for them, but I’m glad to see you have your priorities in order.”

“Damn straight I do.” Bucky dug into his c-rations with an angry scrape of his spoon. What was the fucking point of fighting for freedom if the Dodgers went and traded their best hitter?

Steve’s laugh subsided by degrees and for a while they ate in companionable silence. Whatever the stew was meant to be, the meat was stringy and bland, and the sauce tasted more like the pepper Mortia had added than any discernible flavour, but it was still better than most of the stuff they’d eaten back home.

“I don’t know what’ll happen to me after the war.” Steve ventured quietly, after they both licked their tins clean. “I guess the army’ll probably want to keep me on.” He sighed and fixed his gaze on the middle distance, staring at nothing in particular. “Maybe they won’t; what purpose does ‘Captain America’ serve outside of combat?”

Bucky’s stomach turned again. He hadn’t even thought of that, how could he have been so stupid? Of course, the army weren’t going to let Steve go home, to hang up the suit and shield. There’d be endless photo opportunities, parades. The propaganda and promotion had started already with photo shoots and film reels; after they won the war Steve would be plastered everywhere as a living symbol of American spirit. And what else could you do with a man who was practically indestructible? Bucky didn’t doubt they’d keep Steve breaking barriers. With American’s insatiable ambition to be the first and best at everything, they’d push Steve to all those final frontiers.

“I’m sure they’ll think of something. You’re America’s strongest, toughest man alive.” Bucky grinned with only a slight mocking edge. “They’ll put you out in front of everything; first man to break the sound barrier, first man to climb Everest, hell I’ll bet they even try to send you into space.”

“You think?”

Bucky shrugged. If Stark was already trying to build flying cars, only made sense they’d one day aim higher. “I bet you’ll be the first man on the moon.”

Steve glanced up, but his expression was guarded. For once, Bucky couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know.” Steve pondered. “No. I was their dancing monkey once; not sure I want to try that again.”

It was all still confusing, trying to reconcile Steve, his Steve, with those myths that had sprung up around the ‘star spangled man with a plan’ who’d toured the states in tights, signing with showgirls to drum up funds for the war effort. Bucky couldn’t see Steve standing happily on a stage.

“Then we won’t. We’ll run away, somewhere they can’t find us. San Francisco first, then we can work our way south. I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.” Bucky ventured.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” It was a dream he’d kept guarded because from their rooms in a tenement building in Brooklyn it seemed like an impossible ambition. But compared to the moon, what was Arizona? “It’s meant to be a timeless wonder, that puts everything in perspective. Would be nice to see it.”

“Then we’ll go,” Steve smiled at him, golden hair awash with the glow of the setting sun, eyes bright with so much warmth.

Bucky didn’t care what happened to him after the war. He still wasn’t sure he’d survive it. But if he did, then all he wanted was Steve. Wherever they were. Whatever they were doing, that would be enough.


	4. London 1943 / New York 1947

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ship Peggy with both Angie and Daniel, but as I'm going for as canon-compliant a fix as possible, I've paired her with Daniel for this fic.

_Bucky, Late 1943_

“Let’s hear it for Captain America!” Bucky had rallied the troops to cheer for Steve, watching his best friend bask in his well-earned praise, and hating the bitter twist of fear, anger and dread that churned in his gut. They were shipped back to England after that, billeted in a disused hotel for a brief reprieve from the front lines. They’d barely been back a day when Bucky found himself being ordered to the SSR headquarters buried deep beneath the streets of London. Steve had made his report they day before, and the locations of the Hydra bases spread throughout Europe were pinned to a large map on the wall. Bucky stood beneath it, fidgeting in his Class A’s with his hat tucked under his arm and his hair swept as neatly as it could be across his forehead. He’d been shocked to discovered how loose the dress pants fitted him around his waist and hoped the extra belt hole he’d skewered with the tip of his knife that morning wasn’t too noticeable.

He couldn’t figure out what Colonel Phillips wanted from him, and that made him uneasy. Bucky had already been debriefed by his commanding officer on his return to camp. Once they realised he had little information of any importance – he could only confirm what they already knew, that Zola was trying to recreate the super soldier serum, and Hydra were willing to experiment on prisoners of war to do it – they’d sent him off for a medical. The results showed he was half starved and nursing injuries from fighting his way out of the compound, but there was no evidence of the tests or torture they’d subjected Bucky to, so Bucky thought it best not to mention them; lest they think he was going mad. The last thing he wanted was to be locked in a psych ward. After all, how could he be sure that they’d repeatedly cut him open, broken bones, left him bleeding and screaming from wounds in his arms, his abdomen, his feet – if there were no physical scars to prove it?

“Sergeant Barnes? The Colonel will see you now,” a very pretty blonde woman informed Bucky. He gave her his best smile, but she ignored him, her attention engrossed by a newspaper depicting Steve’s heroics. Not sure if he should feel amused, offended, or jealous, Bucky wiped the smile from his face and stepped into Colonel Philip’s office. He snapped to attention and stood unwavering as he waited for Phillips to look up from the letter he was reading.

“At ease, Sergeant,” Phillips said eventually, letting the paper drop from his hands with a sigh. Poor guy. Weight of the division on his shoulders and now a loose cannon like Steve to contend with, Bucky didn’t envy him. “Captain Rogers has requested you for his team, personally.”

“Yes, sir.” Bucky was well aware of that – they’d discussed it into the night and Bucky had spent a great deal of time convincing Steve that the others would have no problem agreeing to it.

“You’re a good marksman, Barnes. Your scores in basic were impressive and I’ve heard you’re quite the sniper in the field. Damn good at close range too. Not afraid to use a knife when you need to.”

“Sir.” Bucky agreed, wondering where the conversation was headed. Steve had made it sound like he’d been given the go ahead to recruit them.

“Do you know what Captain America means to the folks back home, Barnes?”

Bucky shifted his weight from foot to foot before answering. _A ridiculous man in tights?_ He wanted to say. _The star spangled man with a plan? A comic book character come to life_?

“He’s sentinel of liberty, sir,” Bucky decided to quote directly from the comic books. “The embodiment of American spirit.”

“Yes. He is.” Philips dropped his head. “I wanted an army, instead all I got was a propaganda piece.” He muttered under his breath, speaking more to himself than he was to Bucky, before he stood and moved to perch on the front of his desk. “You’ve been on the frontlines for almost a year now, Sergeant. You know the reality of war. Sometimes we have to get our hands dirty. Compromise our morals.”

“Yes, sir.” Bucky knew it all too well. He’d been forced to abandon any morals he thought he owned the moment he’d picked up and gun and realised how good he was at firing it; how much satisfaction it brought when he hit his target.

“Captain America is a symbol of hope for millions. I can’t allow that symbol to become tarnished – you understand?”

“Sir?” Bucky knit his brows together in confusion. He didn’t follow.

“If you’re going to be Captain America’s right hand man I need to know you’re willing to do what it takes, _whatever_ it takes.” Phillips paused and lowered his tone. “To do the things we can’t ask Captain America to do.”

Comprehension settled at the pit of Bucky’s stomach like bile, he understood perfectly.

“Is that something you’re prepared to do?” Phillips levelled a searching stare at him.

Bucky straightened his shoulders and tried to look confident and capable. “I am.” Afterall, watching Steve’s six, protecting his innocence, wasn’t that what Bucky had been doing all of his life? “I believe it’s what I was made for, sir.”

A flicker of annoyance, amusement, or perhaps it was disgust, crossed Philips’ unreadable face.

“Good.” He stood up and nodded at Bucky. “I’m trusting you to keep him in line, Sergeant. He disobeyed direct orders when he marched across enemy territory to rescue your sorry ass. He also managed to liberate 400 prisoners of war so I can’t reprimand him for it – instead I have to _reward_ him.” Phillips looked royally pissed off by that. “But if he ever tries to pull another stunt like that, someone will pay for it – and it won’t be me. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal. Sir.” Bucky replied, unable to completely hide that smirk that tugged at his mouth. Phillips was delusion if he thought anyone could ever keep Steve in line. Thankfully Phillips was too busy shuffling papers to notice.

“We’re sending you for training with the SAS whilst we figure out where the unit will be most effectively deployed. Don’t let me down, Barnes.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

=

Once safely back in his room Bucky immediately stripped out of his jacket, lost his tie and loosened his shirt. There was a guilt mirror on the far wall of the room which caught his attention. Bucky padded over to it and stared at his reflection; barely recognising himself behind his bruised eyes, sallow skin and gaunt expression. He ruffled a hand through his hair to try and find its usual bounce, but the waves just looked messy rather than tousled. Feeling dispirited, and morbidly curious, Bucky lifted the hem of his shirt to examine his stomach. Zola had overseen the first few sessions, but after that Bucky had been left in the hands of an Italian woman with a sadistic streak a mile wide. Bucky splayed his hand across his left hip, marvelling at the smooth unbroken skin. She’d definitely slashed him open, Bucky had bled for a day, where was the scar? There should be burn marks too, from the cattle prod she’d tasered him with over and over until his skin singed. Footsteps stopped outside his door and Bucky hastily dropped his shirt, turning back to fold up his belonging neatly back into his footlocker.

“Hey,” Steve greeted him brightly, taller than he had any right to be, and dressed sharply in a suit that he filled out for once in his life. It was hard not to stare.

“Hey,” Bucky returned.

“What did Philips want?”

How could Bucky explain? “Wants me to school some army discipline into you,” Bucky replied instead. “To make sure you know you can’t pull another stunt like the rescue mission.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you tell him?”

“That I’d try.”

Steve gave Bucky a ‘hmmm’ and a smile as he picked his way across the room to perch on the edge of Bucky’s bed. “I won’t promise not to liberate another prisoner of war camp, if the need should arise.” Steve said, far too smug.

Bucky just rolled his eyes. He bundled up his tie and threw it into his footlocker, closing the lid and stepping back to lean against the dresser.

“You know, you haven’t told me what they did to you.” Steve said with an uncharacteristic trepidation.

Bucky was well aware of that fact. He had no intention of ever telling Steve the truth, he looked pained enough as it was; if Bucky ever went into all of the gory details, he feared Steve’s heartache might be too much to bear. Instead Bucky shrugged and tried to gloss over the facts.

“They drugged me. After that, everything’s a blur until you showed up.”

Steve didn’t look convinced.

“You haven’t told me what they did to you, either.” Bucky retorted.

“Touché,” Steve couldn’t help but glance down at his body like he still couldn’t believe it was his. “But I volunteered.”

“Which makes you even more of an idiot.” Bucky frowned at him. He’d _told_ Steve not to do anything stupid until he got back. “Did it hurt?”

“Yeah.” Steve finally looked sheepish.

“What’d they do?”

“They injected me, with penicillin first, then the serum. Then they locked me in a chamber and blasted me with vita-rays. And I…grew.”

“What was it like?” Bucky pushed himself off the dresser and perched himself on the bed next to Steve.

“It burned. And ached.” Steve’s brow creased with the memory. “Do you remember that summer you grew five inches practically over night? You said it felt like there was fire in your bones? I imagine it kinda felt like that, but all over. Really intense for about 30 seconds and then I just felt…_tall_.”

It was Bucky’s turn to hum as he gathered his thoughts.

“And I could hear things, Buck. I’d forgotten what is was like to hear in stereo,”

Bucky glanced sideways at Steve.

“And the _colours_,” Steve exhaled in breathless wonderment. “Do you realise how many colours you take for granted?”

“Guess I don’t,” Bucky smiled which caused Steve to give a soft chuckle.

“First time I looked in a mirror I didn’t believe it was me. Not just the, y’know, height and…build…I’ve been meaning to ask – was my hair always this blonde?”

“Course it was,” Bucky reached up to ruffle Steve’s neatly combed hair into a hopeless mess. “What colour did you think it was?”

Steve ducked out of reach of Bucky’s hand.

“I dunno, sort of a tea coloured green?” he used both hands to try and flatten it back to a respectable sweep.

“Green?” Bucky balked, and laughed. “Wait – tea isn’t green! My god, no wonder you never wanted to drink it!”

“How was I meant to know? Jerk – you were meant to tell me those kinds of things,” Steve gave Bucky a light punch on the shoulder. “Like the fact that the statue of liberty _is_ green.”

“Okay, now I _know_ you’re messing with me, punk,” Bucky returned with a goofy smile. Steve just shook his head. “Did you ask the others yet?”

“No, I was waiting for you.”

“Well, let’s go give them the good news.” Bucky stood and extended a hand to pull Steve to his feet – not that he needed the assist, but sometimes old habits die hard.

“You sure they’ll say yes?”

Bucky laughed. “They’re idiots. Buy them a drink and they’ll do whatever you want. They’d follow you to the jaws of hell if you promised them enough beer.” Bucky assured Steve.

“And you? Are _you_ sure?”

“I told you, pal” Bucky clamped Steve on the shoulder like he always used to, still dazed by the fact that he now had to look up to Steve as he spoke. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

## ***

_Steve, New York, November 1947_

_“And now it's time for ‘The Captain America Adventure Program,’ brought to you by Roxxon motor oil.”_

The radio switched over from the harmless news broadcast Steve had been listening to and he almost dropped the plate he was washing up. He hastened to place it safely in the drying rack before he could accidentally smash _another_ of Peggy’s plates (he’d been caught off guard about a week after his return when the news aired that Chuck Yeager had successfully broken the sound barrier. “See, Buck,” Steve had thought to himself as he’d swept up the broken porcelain, recalling an old conversation with Bucky, “They didn’t need me for that after all.”) and wiped his hands on a towel. He crossed the room to switch the radio off, but curiosity stayed his hand as his listened to the announcer introduce the programme. “_In tonight's thrilling tale, Captain American and his sidekick –”_

Sidekick?

_“Bucky Barnes, go toe-to-toe with the human fly!”_

Steve listened to the cheesy back-and-forth between the characters on the radio, and shook his head. He knew the comics and radio programmes had continued to grow in popularity in the forties and fifties, with a second resurgence in the eighties. He’d read some of them – he’d even watched a few of the terrible movies at Tony’s behest– he’d always found them to be absurd. It made him cringe seeing what their characters had been reduced to in popular culture - Bucky especially - and it one of the main reasons Steve had struggled to adapt to the future. Everyone expected him to be a paragon of virtue, all the best ideals of America wrapped up in a nice flag-patterned suit. With nothing else to guide him and no one he could really turn to, Steve had lapsed into the part and tried to be the man they assumed he was. But he’d never been the saint everyone wanted him to be. Those fugitive years, after Zemo had tried to rip everything apart, when Steve and Nat had carried on burning Hyrda’s lingering bases to the ground, that was the closest Steve had felt to being himself in a long time. But Tony had been right. White hot guilt churned in Steve’s chest. He’d acted selfishly and indulgently in those years, and it was his fault the Avengers hadn’t stood together to prevent Thanos from getting his hands on the stones in the first place.

The plate cracked under Steve’s hands. He sighed and carried the two halves carefully to the trash before putting the rest of the dishes into the sink to soak. He’d finish later; when his emotions were under better control. He was just too tightly wound today. Tomorrow morning they’d be setting off for Switzerland to finally, _finally_ rescue Bucky. But until he stepped onto that plane, Steve resigned himself to feeling like a ball of jittery nerves and pent up adrenaline.

He found two long strips of fabric to wrap his knuckles, and dragged the sturdy punching bag from Peggy’s shed to hang on the reinforced fixing he’d fitted to a tree in her garden. The garden wrapped all the way around Peggy’s house, and at the back it opened up onto a swathe of undeveloped land. It had been chosen, Steve suspected, for it’s potential for a quick getaway rather than the views, but the views were lovely, nonetheless. He could see why she liked it out here; the open skyline and the grass and the trees reminded him of England and the sleepy village where he, Bucky and the howling commandos had trained with the SAS for three weeks after liberating Azzano.

Those had been some of the best weeks of Steve’s life. They’d drilled in team exercises all morning to build trust and learn each other’s skills - which normally ended in a fit of laughter from something outrageous Dugan or Bucky said, and a stern reprimand from the very serious English officers who had been lumped with them - followed by one-on-one training in the afternoons to hone their particular specialities. For Steve that meant learning military strategy from the very best, and training how to use the shield. It had taken him a while to figure out how to judge the angles and get it to return to him, and how to catch it on the rebound without dislocating his shoulder or breaking his fingers. Steve lost himself in his memories as his fists collided with the punch bag. He remembered the time he’d sent the shield bouncing off the dummies the SAS had rigged in a field for him, it bounced off one and knocked into another, but instead of spinning neatly back into his hand, it had sailed straight into a duck pond. The SAS officer who’d had to wade in to retrieve it was less than impressed, but Bucky – who had just _happened_ to be walking past at the time, a long range sniper slung over his shoulder and a smug grin on his face – had laughed like it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen. His laugh had stayed ringing in Steve’s ears all afternoon and Steve hadn’t been able to concentrate on a thing.

Steve had never really asked Bucky about the training he’d received on those autumn afternoons in England. He’d tried a few times but after receiving nothing more than a shrug and a “y’know, soldier skills,”, Steve had given up. It was easy to miss at the time, they were at war after all - being shuttled from one battlefield to another, dropped behind enemy lines, leading the charge to retake a town - but looking back Steve realised that the winter soldier’s origins lay well before the soviets had gotten their hands on Bucky. The knife skills, the marksmanship, the ways he pulled information from Hydra agents like thread from a worn sweater; the American army had been busy shaping Bucky to be a deadly weapon long before he’d fallen from the train. Hydra had just used that to their advantage.

Steve pummelled the punch bag with a powerful blows, pushing it almost to breaking point. He followed quick jabs with powerful right hooks, left hooks, an uppercut, before hugging the bag close and bringing up his knee to knock it back with a strong blow, pirouetting to kick it forcefully from the tree. The fixing broke and the bag spilled into the floor, squashing a swathe of hydrangea’s underneath it.

“I’m impressed, that’s the third one you’ve broken this week.” Peggy sounded amused behind Steve.

He turned, sheepishly, and slicked his hair back from his forehead, surprised to find that he’d built up quite a sweat. “Sorry, Peg.”

“No, no, you clearly have some feelings to work through. Here,” she handed him a glass of water and took a sip from her own cup of tea. She was leaning against the kitchen doorjamb in the white blouse and long blue trousers she often wore to the office, she looked like she’d been there for some time.

He took the glass and drained it in one long gulp.

“All set for tomorrow?” Peggy asked.

“As we’ll ever be. Stark’s got the gear and the others are meeting us at the hanger at 0800.”

“We’re going to get him back, Steve, I promise.”

“I know.”

She reached up to plant a reassuring kiss on Steve’s cheek and let her hand linger comfortingly on Steve’s elbow for a moment.

“I’m going to have dinner with Daniel tonight.” She told him, which was to be expected. What came next was not. “and I want you to come.”

“What?”

“I’m inviting Angie, and Jarvis too. We can make it a party.” She tried to make her smile look bright and carefree, but Steve could tell there was an ulterior motive hiding behind her words.

“Peggy,”

“It’s alright, Steve we can trust them.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Steve frowned. “Why now?” They’d spent the past month making sure people didn’t know he was back.

Peggy became very interested in a spot on the kitchen wall.

“Peggy?”

She brought her eyes back to him and Steve felt himself pinned by her determined expression. “I want you to meet them, and I want them to meet _you_.”

“They can, when we get back.”

“What if we don’t come back?” Peggy took a deep breath. “This is a dangerous mission, Steve, you can’t pretend it’s not. We’re going up against a Hydra Head Quarters with no backup, unsanctioned…something is bound to go wrong. And if it does?” She shook her head. “I know you, Steven Rogers. I know what a stubborn, self-sacrificing fool you are. I know that it comes down to a choice between yourself and Barnes, you’ll –” her breath caught, and Peggy looked away again.

“It won’t come to that, Peggy.” Steve gently grabbed her shoulders and tipped his head to try and catch her gaze. “It won’t. This time next week, we’ll all be home safe.”

“I had so many regrets after the Valkyrie crashed.” Peggy breathed. “I realised the other day that I can’t live with anymore. I want them to know you, the _real_ you.”

“Alright.” Steve relented. “I’ll come.” He wasn’t going to be able to rest that evening, anyway; might as well distract himself. And he wanted to meet them, he’d heard so much about all of them from Peggy when in DC. Peggy was right, if things did go south, this might be the only chance he got. “But we’re coming back, all of us. I promise.”

“And you always keep your promises.”

“Eventually.” Steve smiled.

=

To say that Daniel Sousa was surprised to see Captain America standing on his doorstep was an understatement. The poor guy nearly fell over in shock. Angie, on the other hand was delighted.

“My, my. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” She grinned at Steve. “Angie Martinelli, pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you too,” Steve laughed. He held out his hand for her to shake, but Angie pulled him in for a hug instead. It took him by surprise, but he placed a hand on her back and tried not to laugh as she practically melted against him. Peggy had warned him that Angie was an actress and always very dramatic about everything. It was nothing Steve wasn’t used to, after the battle of New York he’d forever been stopped in the street and asked for ‘selfies’, autographs, and hugs.

“I never wanted to believe you were dead, but Peggy seemed so cut up about it that I thought it must be true. How’d you survive anyhow?” Angie asked when she finally let Steve go.

“I swam.” Steve gave a demure smile and glanced at Daniel who looked like his shock might actually be _‘shock’_, in the true medical sense. “Sousa? It’s good to finally meet you,” he held out his hand. “Peggy’s told me so much about you.”

“She has?”

“Yes, dear,” Peggy assured him with a comforting tone. She entwined her fingers with his and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, followed by a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Come on, everyone, let’s have a drink.”

Steve tried to make it clear that he wasn’t interested in competing with Daniel for Peggy and gradually throughout the evening he warmed to Steve. A certain degree od distrust lingered in his gaze, though, even after they settled into the living room with drinks after dinner. Peggy and Angie were busy washing up in the kitchen, Steve had offered to help, but Peggy had very sternly shot him down; leaving the two of them alone.

“I take it Peggy isn’t flying to England to visit her sick grandmother tomorrow.” Daniel said, fixing Steve with a glare.

“No. She’s not.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Steve swilled his drink around the bottom of his glass, trying to decide how to answer. In the end he couldn’t lie. “Yes, it is.”

Daniel nodded, looking resigned. “Watch out for her?”

“Peggy can handle herself, Sousa.”

“I know.” He looked at Steve, his eyes pleading. He desperately loved Peggy, that much was clear. Even if Steve didn’t know about the future that awaited the two of them, he would have known they’d make a great match, just from look alone. “I just don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Peggy’s laugh rang from the kitchen, followed by a fit of giggles from Angie. Steve glanced fondly at the doorway whilst Daniel’s eyes stayed fixed on him.

“Please?”

“I’ll make sure she comes back to you.” Steve assured him. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the MCU Pre-serum Steve was deaf in one ear and colourblind. (fun fact: My dad is colourblind and always goes on about how my sister's blonde hair looks green, and apparently didn't ever know the statue of liberty was green until we visited last year and one of us made an off-hand comment about the green statue of liberty hats you could buy in the gift shop O.o).


	5. Switzerland 1947 / France 1944

_ Steve, Swiss Alps, November 1947 _

After fourteen hours of flying, including a brief refuelling stop in a quiet Scottish airfield, Stark’s plane finally entered Swiss airspace. Steve forced himself to his feet and stretched the numbness from his arms and legs, waking the others so they could begin their final preparations. The plane rattled violently and the engines roared something awful as they soared high above the alps. Steve longed for the smooth stealth of the quinjet; everyone was going to hear them coming from a mile-off. 

“Alright, cap?” Dugan asked him, looking genuinely concerned. “You look a little green.”

Steve couldn’t answer, he clamped his mouth shut and gave Dugan a hard stare.

“Let him be, Dum Dum, last time he was in a plane it didn’t end well,” Mortia defended Steve, with just a hint of mocking in his tone. 

“That’s why we’re not letting him fly,” Dugan laughed. He pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the front of the plane, giving Steve’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he passed. 

He hadn’t told the others about the time travel; instead he'd kept up the lie he’d told Angie and Sousa – that he’d swam ashore after the crash and spent the last two years with mild amnesia as he worked his way back towards New York. It was easier to keep up that story, anything else was too difficult, not to mention too painful, to discuss. They accepted that Peggy had dug up the information on Hydra and Bucky during her dealings with Leviathan and had been only too happy to volunteer their services. 

Steve glanced between them; Dugan, Jones, Mortia and Peggy were all here for Bucky, he knew them well and had expected their support; but Sawyer and Pinkerton were an unknown quantity. 

Sawyer was a competent Corporal who’d served with another squadron of commandos, they’d crossed paths a couple of times during Steve’s final months of the war, and Pinkerton had been on Steve’s radar as a potential sniper replacement for Bucky. He knew their service history and their reputations, even if he hadn't, the fact that Peggy and Dugan trusted them would have been enough for Steve; but it was one thing trusting someone to have your back, and another to drag them into harm’s way to settle a very personal score. Steve would never be fully okay asking other people to go to war for him. It was something he’d had to stomach over the years, but he was never going to like the taste.

“Coming up on the drop zone,” Dugan shouted over the roar of the engines as he staggered back from his conversation in the cockpit with Stark. “Sound off for equipment check.”

Steve, Sawyer and Pinkerton stood and began to run the last safety checks of each other’s parachutes before lining up by the open door. 

“One, okay!” Pinkerton shouted from the back of the line. 

“Two, okay!” Sawyer added.

“Three, okay.” Steve took his place in the doorway, hands braced on the outside of the plane.

“Approaching drop zone in 30 seconds!” Dugan shouted. 

Freezing wind whipped past Steve into the plane as he stared into the black void beyond. He rolled his shoulders and stomped excess adrenaline from his legs. The snowcapped peaks of the alps were just visible in the low light and tiny pinpricks of light marked out the towns at their feet. 

“Good luck, Gents, see you on the other side,” Peggy gave them all a reassuring smile.

"Now! Go, go, go!" Dugan shouted. 

Steve filled his lungs and jumped from the plane. The cold hit him like a freight train and knocked all of the air from his chest. His stomach lurched as he hurtled towards the ground for one, two, three, moments before he pulled the cord and opened his chute. The sudden jolt as he rapidly decelerated and the harness yanked at his thighs - it had been so long since he'd worn a parachute that he'd forgotten just how uncomfortable it was - but the slow descent that followed was strangely calming. He glanced above to see Sawyer and Pinkerton’s chutes open and to watch the dim light of Stark’s plane already soaring away across the alps. 

They were on their own.

Steve focused on his landing zone, pulling on the risers to steer away from a particularly dense copse of trees, and headed for a thick clump of snow on the mountain side. He dropped and rolled into the deep snow, ending up face down in the snowdrift, which instantly clung to his face in frozen droplets; biting at his skin with the cold. He hastened to cut himself free from the parachute and bundled it up before burying it in the indent he’d left in the snow. The next immediate necessity was to don the thick white winter coat he carried in his backpack, and strap his K-31 rifle across his chest; the dark blue swiss military uniforms they’d dressed themselves in were great camouflage for parachuting against a black sky, but they were little use on a snow strewn mountainside. He fastened the coat right up to his chin and pulled the padded hood around his head. The cold still nipped as his nose and his cheeks, but at least the wind wasn’t whistling through to his bones anymore. Steve covered his tracks and crept towards the trees to rendezvous with the others. He felt somewhat naked walking into battle without a shield, and carrying a gun had never sat right with him, but he wasn’t here as Captain America; he was here as Steve Rogers, and he was out for blood. 

The others were lying prone on a rocky outcrop when Steve found them. Pinkerton was using the scope from his sniper rifle to survey the valley below and Sawyer was covering his back. As Steve approached, Sawyer raised his rifle, instantly alert. 

“Flash,” Sawyer hissed into the darkness.

“Thunder,” Steve returned the counter-call and watched Sawyer relax. 

“Did you have any trouble?” he asked as Steve hurried towards them in a crouch.

“No. You?”

“Sawyer almost got himself tangled in a tree,” Pinkerton whispered with a smug tone of delight. 

“But I didn’t.” 

They had an easy familiarity with each other that spoke of many months of serving side-by-side. Steve tried to ignore the pang of jealousy and longing it sparked in his chest. He crawled forwards to peer over the edge of the outcrop and pulled a pair of binoculars from inside his coat to assess the lay of the land. “Any activity?”

“None what-so-ever.”

‘The Lodge’ sprawled on the hillside below them; an innocuous name for a scientific research facility that Steve knew was far from benign. It looked dark and unassuming, little more than a cluster of stone buildings ringed by a wall and guarded by watch towers. But the size of the power generators that stood behind the buildings, and the amount of vehicles hidden behind a barn belied the size of the place. From the vents spewing hot air into the snow a few hundred yards from the main buildings, Steve suspected there was a sprawling maze of rooms hidden underground. 

Bucky was in there somewhere. 

It took every ounce of Steve’s strength of mind not to make a run for it and blast through the front doors. Being this close to Bucky, knowing he was enduring horrors beyond imagination brought a physical ache to Steve’s chest. He forced himself to stay calm and patient; they had a plan. They had to stick to it. 

=

There was a military outpost station in St. Gallen to monitor the border with Austria and oversee the transition back to peacetime, so a handful of Swiss soldiers could walk the streets without drawing attention to themselves. That is to say, Steve, Sawyer and Pinkerton, could walk past the front gate of the Lodge, dressed in Swiss uniforms, noting the number of guards, the security features, and the delivery schedule, without being considered suspicious. By the time Peggy and Dugan rumbled up the snow lined track to the vacated shepherd’s hut they’d commandeered as the base for their operations, they had a plan.

The main buildings of the Lodge were circled by tall stone walls, topped with barbed wire and guarded by sentry towers at each corner. All vehicles were stopped at the gate and thoroughly searched before being allowed to enter. Entering through the main entrance, or any of the main buildings, was not an option. But the vents Steve had spotted from their perch in the mountains offered an alternative way in. Yes, the watch towers were manned by sentries with sniper rifles and anyone attempting to cross the open ground and reach the vents would be shot before they had the chance to come close - but if they caused a big enough diversion at the main gate, it just – just – might buy them enough time to sneak in. It was the only chance they had.

= 

“Pinkerton, you’ll cover us from the trees – once the diversion is in play, take out anyone who looks to be a threat.”

“Roger that.”

“Sawyer, we need as much time as you can give us, really play up the French accent, try and cause as much chaos as you can – then get the hell out of there and be ready at the rendezvous point.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Dugan, Peggy, you’re with me. Remember, this is a Hydra research facility. We don’t know what they’re capable of, or what they’ll throw at us, so stay sharp. Don’t trust anything.” Steve glanced between them all, noting the fierce determination in the clench of their jaws and the steely glint in their eyes. “Watch each other’s backs, and be careful.” Steve impressed. “The war you signed up for is over. I won’t stop fighting until Hydra is blasted from history, but that doesn’t mean you should. If things go sideways, get yourself out of there. Meet back at the rendezvous, and don’t worry about me.”

“We knew what we were up against when we volunteered for this mission.” Dugan assured Steve with a determined smile. “And we know the stakes.”

“You can count on us not to run away from a fight,” Sawyer agreed.

Steve ground his teeth for a moment. Even he didn’t know what they were up against, but he could see they weren’t going to be swayed so he gave them each a brief nod and forced a smile. “Then let’s go get 'em.”

=

At 1000 hours a delivery truck rolled up the narrow road towards the Lodge, arriving at precisely the same moment Sawyer attempted a 3-point turn in his truck. Sawyer backed the truck into the driveway, effectively blocking the entrance as guards hurried out to move him along. He stalled the truck, ground the gears and flooded the engine, all the while shouting apologies in heavily accented French. The delivery driver was left sitting in the road loudly honking his horn and spewing angry Swiss-German back at him.

The sentry guards flocked to see the commotion, turning their backs on the mountains and the snow covered fields behind them. Pinkerton gave Steve the signal, and he, Peggy and Dugan pelted from behind the trees towards a vent. Steve pried it open and they leapt in one after the other in quick succession. The guards didn’t notice a thing.

Steve landed lightly in a dark corridor, walled and floored in perfunctory concrete. A single bare light bulb housed in a wire cage hung from the ceiling but it wasn’t lit. A thick back cable snaked along the corridor, linking it to other lights and switches. The corridor branched a few times, and light spilled through from up ahead.

“We should split up,” Peggy whispered. “Cover more ground.”

“No, we stick together.” Steve ordered. They were outmanned and underprepared; splitting up would only cut off from each other. “This way.”

If Peggy and Dugan shared a look behind his back, Steve didn’t notice. He crept down the dark corridor towards the light spilling through from the junction at the end with his heart beat pounding loudly in his ears. The bunker-like layout of the facility felt very similar to the POW camp where he’d rescued Bucky from the first time. Swirls of steam misted through vents in the floor and loud machinery was whirring away from deep inside the facility. Steve found his thoughts and memories getting muddled as they hurried through the dark tunnels. He half expected Red Skull to come barrelling around the corner at any moment. But of course that was impossible; Red Skull was currently guarding the soul stone on Vormir, and Steve needed to keep his mind sharp and focused. 

A pair of Hydra guards walked past the end of the corridor and they flattened themselves to the wall to avoid detection. Steve crept after them, silently, and used a knife to silence them; quick and efficient, the way Bucky used to do it. With Dugan's help, Steve dragged them into a store room and crushed the handle so they wouldn't be found quickly. 

"This way," he nodded towards the corridor which should, if the facility was built with any sort of sense, take them towards the middle. He kept a careful track of their route in his mind as they twisted and turned through the corridors. Much of the place looked disused, Steve guessed their operations had ramped down after the war had ended, but they passed laboratories where scientists beavered away, dormitories where the night watch slumbered, and store rooms with shelves and shelves of gas filled cannisters. Here, Peggy paused to scribble down the chemical composition stamped on the side. With their dark uniforms and determined gait, they strolled past windows and doors without a problem, they dispatched a few more guards without too much of a struggle and soon they were right in the heart of the facility; but so far there had been no sign of Bucky, nor of anywhere they might be storing him. But he had to be here, the documents in Zola's office had said so. 

"Steve," Peggy whispered in a hushed tone as they came to a dead end. "Steve, the train leaves in forty minutes, we're losing our window." 

Every morning at precisely 11.06 a freight train crossed the level crossing which separated the Lodge from the road in St. Gallen. The train was about a mile long and took no less than 27 minutes to clear the crossing. To make a clean getaway, they needed to put the train between themselves and the Hydra agents who would be in pursuit. 

"I know, I know. He's here…. Somewhere." 

Panic gripped Steve' heart like an icy hand, which fluttered wildly to try and shake it loose. Steve wasn't leaving here without Bucky. 

"You should go, take some of those cannisters with you for testing, I can't believe they're anything good."

"We're not leaving you, Steve," 

"Yeah, well, you should." he snapped back, feeling irrationally angry and flustered all of a sudden. It took him a moment to realise there was a sharp metallic taste clinging to the roof of his mouth, and that his rate was elevated out of more than just panic. The gas. Swirls of mist had followed through almost every corner of the compound, but here they were far more pronounced, pooling on the ceiling and slipping disappearing through the wall at the end of the corridor. Steve clamped his sleeve over his mouth and nose and held his breath, feeling the serum work double time to expel the toxin from his system. When it did the wall melted before his eyes. Steve found himself staring at a sheet metal door with a complicated looking combination lock dead centre. 

_ Bucky _ . 

Steve grabbed the narrow seam of the door and pulled with all of his might, straining every muscle. His dislocated a finger with a pop and a flare of agony, but it was nothing to the white noise that blared in his mind.

_ Bucky. I'm coming for you.  _

"Steve, what are you-" Peggy and Dugan tried to pull him away from the door, but Steve shrugged them off, concentrating on pulling the metal apart, all the while not daring to take another breath. 

Just when he thought even his super strength might not be enough to manage it, the locking mechanism snapped and the doors crumpled like tin foil under his hands. Beyond was a dark room lit with only the flickering blue glow of machines powered by the tesseract. 

"The gas," Steve risked a whisper, feeling the image wobble as gas seeping into his lungs. "It's some kind of hallucinogen. Come on." he stepped through the door, and there, lying prone on a surgical table, enclosed in a shimmering case of ice, was Bucky. 

#  ***

_ Bucky, France, November 1944 _

A crowd of onlookers surged around their jeep as they pulled to a stop outside the command tent. 

"That's Captain America," voices whispered in awe. 

"Roscoe's gonna be pissed he slept through this."

"Hey, Cap - will you sign my helmet?" 

Steve ignored them all, giving a genial wave and disappearing quickly into the tent. Bucky stayed in the jeep as the command briefings weren't usually aimed a him, but the incessant mutterings and speculations were slowly driving him insane. 

"Don't you have someplace else to be?" he demanded, grumpily.

"Yeah, back in Des Moines, but then Hitler started this whole thing, and now I'm here," one of the soldiers quipped with a very smug looking smile. 

Bucky rolled his eyes and leapt down from the jeep, slinking around to the back of the command tent to find some peace and quiet. He perched himself on a stack of crates and began to polish his knives. He didn't intentionally try and eavesdrop, but tents were never very good soundproofing material. 

"- Captain Bowerman, as a matter of urgency." One of the brass was saying. 

"What's so special about him?" that was Steve, sounding earnest and determined as ever. 

"He's a British double agent, embedded deep in the German intelligence. Or he was, until his cover was blown yesterday."

Bucky let out a low whistle. Hate to be that guy. 

"We need you to extract him before he can spill any secrets to the German High command. Or else our entire operation may be in jeopardy."

Scratch that, Bucky reconsidered. Hate to be guys sent to rescue him. He seathed the knife that was now glinting like it was made of quicksilver, and began to field strip his pistol with military precision. 

"We believe they're holding him in a Hydra stronghold just outside of Dortmund. We can't give you much back up in this one, Captain, it's too far behind enemy lines."

"What else is new?" Steve muttered under his breath and Bucky flashed a grin that glinted just as dangerously as his knife. 

=

The mission started out well. Bucky watched through the scope of his sniper rifle as Steve, Falsworth and Jones infiltrated the strong hold from the roof. It was snowing gently and flakes drifted slowly past his scope. 

"Eagle's in the basket." Mortia radioed into high command. The only back-up they'd been given was an artillery unit, poised to rain mortars down on the place if the situation went sideways. It was a last resort; the mortars would likely take them out as well. Bucky swept his gaze across the entire facility. Somewhere out there, Dugan and Dernier were planting explosives around the perimeter to detonate on their departure. Bucky couldn't see them, which could only be a good sign. He trained the scope back on the main door and waited with baited breath; expecting things to wrong. 

He didn't have to wait long. 

Steve crashed through the front door with his shield raised to protect the others from the debris. Okay, Bucky groaned internally, not the quiet get away they were hoping for. Steve carried an unconscious man slung across his shoulders who Bucky could only assume was Bowerman. 

"Eagle has the package," Mortia radioed it in. "Covering extraction, now." 

Bowerman's weight didn't seem to slow Steve down at all. Keeping the shield high to protect the man's head, he battled through the swarms of guards now flocking towards them. Bucky didn't have time to be impressed. He picked off the krauts with his rifle as fast as he could, focusing on the ones out of reach of Steve's fists. Behind Steve, Jones and Falsworth covered their retreat. They might have made it, until a huge - fucking - tank crashed through the wall behind them. 

"Where the hell did that come from?" Bucky muttered. Mortia sprayed covering fire with his machine gun, but the bullets pinged off the tank with no effect. 

The turret turned and aimed a blast right at Jones and Falsworth. Without hesitating, Steve threw the shield in a curved arc that caught the brunt of the blast but sent the shield skittering away from him. The tank turned to fire again, this time aimed directly at Steve.

Bucky's heart leapt into his mouth, he wanted to scream but couldn't give away his position. He watched helpless and horrified as the tank fired. Steve wrapped his body around Bowerman's and took the hit directly in his back. The blast sent him flying across the rocky ground until he collapsed on top of Bowerman in a crumpled heap. 

White noise filled Bucky's ears. 

_ Steve! _

"Tell Dernier to set the charges and fall back, now!" Bucky ordered Mortia, pulling his MK-15 from the harness on his back and sprinting out into the fray. He mowed down Hydra agents as he went and scooped to pick up the shield, using it to cover himself as he helped Falsworth and Jones to their feet. 

"Get to Bowerman, and get him out. I've got Steve." Bucky told them, holding the shield above his face to absorb another blow from the tank. The force sent him flying backwards, and his leg bent awkwardly beneath him. He was pretty sure he heard the bone in his ankle snap. Sure enough, when he tried to stand it was like someone had jammed a red hot poker up through his foot and into his shin. He buried the pain at the back of his mind and limped towards Steve; his leg would heal, if Steve was dead - that wasn't something Bucky was going to be able to recover from. Bucky reached him just as the tank powered up to fire again, he crouched, something exploded, and Bucky tensed for a blast that never came. 

He poked his head above the shield to see the tank had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of smouldering remains. It took another shrieking whistle and defeating blast for Bucky to realise what was happening; the artillery strike. Mortia must have called it in. At the same moment the buildings began to be blasted apart from the charges Dernier and Dugan had set. It felt like the whole world was being torn to pieces around them. They had to get out of there; fast.

"C'mon, Steve, don't be dead." Bucky looped Steve's arm around his shoulder and struggled to his feet. It was a herculean task hauling all 240lbs of Steve's deadweight across the rubble, limping on a broken ankle and trusting that the others would be providing covering fire. More artillery shells dropped behind them, causing shock waves full of shrapnel that sent Bucky stumbling forwards each time. They were still a dozen yards from the ridge that he and Mortia had been hidden behind when Bucky collapsed. That last thing he saw was saw Jones and Mortia running towards them as his vision blacked out and he fell to the floor.

=

Bucky came to face down on a forest floor with a biting pain in his back. He tensed away from it, hissing sharply and trying to gauge his surroundings. It was snowing heavier now and a thick blanket of white filled forest floor. It was cold and dark, and very, very quiet. 

"Keep still, Sarge, unless you want to stay a Hydra pin cushion." Dugan told him in a low voice. Bucky heard the words but didn't register them. His only thought was  _ Steve _ . 

"Steve? Where is he?"

"Alive. Just." Dugan assured him, digging another picked of jagged metal from Bucky's hip. Bucky cursed and arched away from it, wincing as Dugan doused it in the sulphur antiseptic powder they all carried in their medical kits. 

"I need to see him," Bucky tried to stand, but Dugan pinned him with a pair of strong arms and stopped him from moving. 

"You  _ need  _ to lie still and let me treat you," Dugan ordered him. "You've got a back full of shrapnel and a broken ankle, you're going nowhere fast. Jones and Mortia are taking care of Steve and Falsworth's looking after the limey. God I hope his Intel was worth all this effort to protect." Dugan ripped another slither of exploded tank, this time from Bucky's thigh and Bucky bite his tongue to stop himself from screaming into the night. 

Dugan patched him up and splinted his ankle as fast as was humanly possible, but Bucky was ready to tear his hair out by the time he was allowed to go and see Steve. They were still deep behind enemy lines with a very limited supply of medical equipment on them. When Bucky saw the state of Steve he began to berate Dugan for wasting so much of it on him. They'd made him a nest of all of their jackets and tried to prop him as comfortably on his stomach as they could, packing deep banks of snow around him to try and keep him warm. Bucky sat himself beside Steve's broken body and gently cradled Steve's head into his lap. Even that slight movement sent Steve's eyes wide with hurt and terror, but once his cheek settled against Bucky's thigh he seemed to breathe easier. 

"There you go," Bucky cooed, trying not to look at the open mess of Steve's back which was lumpy with congealed blood and burnt fibres of his uniform. He was just about conscious, eyes dilated wide with the eight doses of morphine Jones had injected him with. That amount would kill a normal man, but Steve hardly normal anymore; he'd never been normal, not to Bucky. Bucky cupped Steve's jaw gently and used his other hand to brush Steve's hair from his face. It was full of dust and grime, Bucky could almost see where Steve's old eyes had conjured a 'tea-green' colour from. "Don't you go and die on me, pal. Y' hear? That's an order."

Steve tried to mumbled something but ended up dribbling blood down his chin instead. Bucky wiped it away with the sleeve of his jacket and told Steve to shush; using the same soothing tone he had done so many times before when Steve had almost died of pneumonia or a fever on him in the night. 

"You're okay. I'm here, you don't need to talk. Just concentrate on getting better, yeah? I know that super serum they gave you works quick, focus on that, let it piece you back together."

"That's part of the problem," Jones hissed at Bucky. "The skin keeps trying to heal around the injuries, but they're full of dirt and debris, and fabric, that it's only making things worse."

"We need a medical evac, now." Bucky hissed back. 

"Not an option. We radioed high command, they said the same thing as they did before we left: too far behind enemy lines, they can't get to us."

"Then we need a truck. A jeep. Anything. 

"There's a military outpost a few miles from here." Bowerman spoke up. Bucky glanced up at him. His arm was in a sling and his face was badly messed in. Beneath the bruises, the blood and the broken nose, he at least had the gall to look sorry for the mess he'd caused. "They must have transport." 

Bucky shared a look with Dugan. "It's our only option. Super soldier or not, Steve needs medical attention."

It was settled, the rest of them went to steal transport from the German outpost, leaving Bucky to guard over Steve's body. He gripped his rifle in one hand and used the other to card through Steve's hair. The Morphine wore off quickly and tremors of pain began to ripple through Steve's body. 

"Do you remember that Sunday, before I left for training? We went down to Ebbet's field to watch the Dodgers play. I'd just cleared my first check from the army, but you still wouldn't let me pay for your ticket. Let me buy you a hot dog though." Bucky smiled fondly at the memory. "Cheese, onions, ketchup, all the trimmings. It felt like such a treat. One of the best meals I've ever had." 

Bucky's memories were still scrambled from whatever they'd done to him in Azzano. He couldn't tell you what year anything happened, and sometimes he had the oddest memories of attending school in a little town in Italy, but one thing stuck out clearly through the haze and the fog; Steve's golden face, his bright blue eyes, and the practically perpetual smudge of red from a split lip, a bloodied nose, chalk dust or paint. 

"I wrote you, almost every day from the training camp but I couldn't bring myself to post any of them." The other guys had scribbled home letters to their wives and sweethearts, but Bucky had only ever wanted to write to Steve. "You were so angry with me for leaving…" Bucky gently swiped his thumb across Steve's brow. "I never told you I was drafted. You assumed I'd enlisted and I let you think that; you were already so worried about me, it was easier to pretend it's what I wanted." Bucky admitted into the dark. "God, I was so scared, Stevie. And angry that they were taking me away from you. I didn't want to leave you, I hope you know that. I'd never choose to leave you. I love you." Bucky's throat hitched as he spoke the words out loud. He didn't know how much Steve could hear or understand, but he had to tell him. Now, before it was too late. "I love you. And I don't know what I'd do without you. So don't you die on me, okay? 'cause I meant what I said; I can' t do this, not without you. I am so uninterested in living this life without you, pal." 

Steve remained unresponsive and tears stung at the corners of Bucky' s eyes. He packed more snow onto Steve's back and grabbed hold of his hand, clutching at fingers which were slowly growing cold. 

It felt like a lifetime later, but the sky was still dark so Bucky knew it had been a few hours at most, when the low rumble of a truck cut through the trees. He grabbed his rifle and sat poised to defend their position as a pair of headlights bathed them in a bright yellow glow. Dugan leapt down from the driver's cab, his shilouette with the stupid bowler hat he wore was unmistakable. 

"C'mon, Sarge, let's load him up." 

=

Bucky held Steve's hand the whole way back to camp, he would have sat by Steve's beside if he'd been allowed, but the army kept him busy: interrogating Bowerman to make sure he wasn't a  _ triple _ agent, and teaching a masterclass in marksmanship to the soldiers whilst they waited for Steve to recuperate and new orders to come in. 

A wound like Steve's would have killed anyone else, but after only three weeks he was up and walking around. Bucky found him doing pull ups from the back of a truck the day after he'd been discharged from the medical tent.

"You're sure that's a good idea?" Bucky asked. 

Steve dropped from the truck, slightly breathless and flushed. "I'm fine Buck; fit as a fiddle, look." He lifted his shirt to show Bucky his back. The skin was fresh, tender, and baby-smooth. Bucky splayed his hand across it amazed. Not a scar in sight. Steve rolled his shoulders and Bucky felt firm muscles clench and slide under his fingers. He swallowed a lump in his throat. 

"You're a jerk. Thinking you could take on a tank without your shield." Bucky stepped back and let Steve smooth his shirt back into place. 

"Yeah, and you're a punk for running in after me like that. How's the ankle?" Steve returned with an inscrutable grin. Bucky wanted to punch him. And maybe kiss him. 

"Better now." Bucky scuffed his foot and shifted his weight into it. His ankle had been fine practically before Dugan and the others had returned with the truck. In the confusion and the chaos no one had seemed to notice, or to care. 

A week after that and they were being shipped back out to the front. To the Eastern front of all places, where Steve punched his way through a Hydra blockade that had an allied Battalion trapped behind enemy lines. He saved over a thousand men and the army stuck yet another medal on his chest. 

Bucky watched from the sidelines yet again, wanting more than anything to take Steve home back to Brooklyn to string popcorn round a Christmas tree and try not to set their apartment on fire as they balanced candles in amongst the branches. Instead they spent Christmas shivering their assess off in a forest in Belgium and chasing Hydra around Europe like nobody's business. 

Just when Bucky thought they might be allowed a week of reprieve, a furlough back to London, or Paris, where he might pluck up the courage to repeat the truths he'd whispered to Steve in the forest outside Dortmund; they intercepted a radio transmission telling them Zola would be on a train heading through the alps. Everything went into overdrive and Bucky never got a chance to tell him. 


	6. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monica Rappaccini's story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The MCU doesn't explain how Bucky falls off a train in the alps and winds up in a Russian hands, so this is my explanation. It's a little exposition heavy, but I think it's necessary. (Back to our boys in thr next chapter.)
> 
> (also, between the MCU and Agents of Shield, they've used most of the canon Hydra big bads, so I've borrowed Monica from A.I.M. and taken a few liberties with her character, hopefully you won't mind!)

_Interlude_

Monica Rappaccini was a biochemical genius. She probably would have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry or medicine, if she’d lived during any other era. For as long as she could remember she’d dreamed of studying at the university of Padua; developing her theories with like-minded scholars and scientists. But Mussolini’s ideals for women were strictly limited to childrearing. Monica was twelve when he came to power, and it seemed like everyday there was new legislation keeping her away from academia or the workforce. Determined to leave her mark on the world, she was forced to develop her designs in secret; working with a professor at the university who published her findings in his name. It infuriated her that she couldn’t take credit for her work, but Monica couldn’t pass up the only opportunity that allowed her to pursue her love for science. One day, she told herself, things would be different. 

It wasn’t until 1939 that she got her chance. When Italy sided with the Axis Powers, Hydra Agents came to visit the university; recruiting for their science division. They latched on to the work Monica had been doing for the Professor, particularly her research into enhanced antibodies and improvements to the lymphatic system. When the professor was unable to adequately explain one of her experiments, the Agents demanded to know who was really responsible for the work. That was how Monica found herself working for Doctor Armin Zola in a secret scientific laboratory in Switzerland, trying to recreate a ‘super soldier serum’ that would give the Axis Powers a legion of unstoppable soldiers. She was given an unlimited budget and free reign to develop biomedical advances that supported Zola’s research, along with biochemical weapons, and anything else her scientific mind could dream up. 

Monica flourished, quickly asserting herself as the head of the department. All of her resentment from over the years poured into her work. For the first time in her life she didn’t have to hide her intelligence. She thrived. It didn’t escape her notice that she was building weapons that were meant to destroy, but when Italy entered the war in 1940, Monica found she no longer cared. The Allied Forces dropped bombs on Padua, troops clashed in north Africa, and Italian soldiers were killed in their thousands. Word reached her that her brother had been killed. Then her mother, and her sweet baby sister who had never dreamed of harming a fly. Monica found herself wanting revenge. 

As the war raged on, Hydra expanded their operations and Monica was transferred to Austria; working right at the epicentre of their research and development. When Colonel Schmitt discovered a new energy source in 1942, things went into overdrive. Their weapons became supercharged, the applications seemed limitless; and their troops became unstoppable. Allied Forces landed in Sicily and soon they were sweeping up the Italian mainland. The German Army couldn’t hold them back, but when they met the Hydra blockade, their advance was stopped. 

Prisoners of war flooded into Kreischberg as a labour force for their ever increasing weapon production. The Valkyrie project demanded a strong workforce, so when the men grew too frail to work; they became guinea pigs for Monica and Zola’s research. 

One by one men were shot up with the prototype serum, and one by one they died. Monica was shocked – not by how their bodies writhed and convulsed, every muscle contracting as the serum tried to enhance its natural capability, not by how they screamed in agony until their vocal chords ruptured and they were left spent, exhausted, and drained of life – but by her reaction. Or her lack of one. Cold hearted and clinical, she noted the symptoms of their suffering, seeing them as nothing more than problems to be tweaked in the next attempt at a solution. One day the serum would be perfected and then an army of elite Italian and German soldiers would be unleashed upon the world. Until then, Monica kept working her way through the dregs of their prisoners of war. 

In October 1943, Monica hit the jackpot. A prisoner had just finished washing the blood, shit and vomit from the floor when they brought him in. He hung limply between two guards, listless and resigned to death. He didn’t fight as the others had when they strapped him to the table, it was only when he realised Monica wasn’t going to give him a quick death that he began to struggle. 

“No,” he cried, straining against the thick leather straps that pinned him down. He had strength, of mind even if not of his weakened body. It was clear that he was suffering from atypical pneumonia, and he must have brawling with another prisoner, if the black eye, three broken ribs and a two cracked fingers were anything to go by. He couldn’t work on the Valkyrie like that, so he’d found his way here. And oh, he was a perfect specimen. Strong cheekbones, waves of dark hair and blue grey eyes like the sea after a storm. He looked like he'd stepped out of any one of the beautiful frescoes which adorned her home town. Muscles flexed and tensed as he fought against the restraints. It almost seemed a shame to waste him. 

Monica’s team found the major veins in his arms and legs and injected him with four does of the serum simultaneously. The convulsions began almost instantly. Monica watched with a keen eye noting his ragged breathing, the clench and unfurl of his hands and feet, the power that rippled across his abdomen. The tremors stopped almost as suddenly as they began and the prisoner slumped slack against his restraints. Only his chest continued to rise and fall. Monica watched stunned as the prisoner breathed savagely, like he’d just run a marathon. He breathed. He lived. 

The serum worked. 

Over the following weeks Monica devoted her time to testing the limits of the serum. They cut him open and let him heal, watching his skin and bones knit themselves back together far faster than they had any right too; leaving not even the faintest scar in their wake. The prisoner screamed at her in English, German, Italian, sometimes he even lapsed into Russian. 

“ Fermare, Fermare. Per favour! Uccidimi… Please, just kill me… Tue Moi, s’il vous plait… It hurts… Please… Tote mich...xotetb .” 

Monica listened with interest. Perhaps she didn’t need to start over with an Italian specimen after all. What could be more satisfying then turning one of their own back against the British and Americans who had destroyed her city? 

She’d been developing hallucinogenic gases that could instil terror into troops, leaving them rooted and quaking on the spot whilst the Axis forces picked them off; she began to tweak the chemical makeup – creating very specific scenarios to target at the prisoner. 

She painted pictures in his mind: he was an Italian soldier, injured, receiving treatment in hospital; he had memories of Padua; he had family who had been killed, who needed to be avenged. It worked at times. He would gabble in nonsensical Italian, and then moan about when he could return to his  compagni . But the success was fleeting. When his senses returned he would mutter his name, rank and serial number over and over to himself; clearly anchoring himself in his mind. When that happened Monica would make him bleed. Inflicting pain and letting him heal whilst she planned different tactics to develop. 

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. 32557038…Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes…”

Given more time, she probably would have cracked him. But nothing is stable in war. The facility was attacked and Schmitt showed his true colours (literally; Monica was unspeakably pleased to know that her super soldier had kept his looks). He set the facility to self-destruct without giving any of the Hydra agents a proper warning. It was only thanks to the phase belt Monica had made for herself which teleported her 100 yards from the explosion that she survived. All of her research, all of her success was lost.

But not the sergeant. 

Monica retreated to the base in Switzerland and picked up her research with a fervour. She followed the developments of the war, watching as Captain America ripped through Schmitt’s facilities one by one – and that’s when she saw him. Her sergeant. Plastered over the news reels, fighting by his side; Captain America’s right hand man.

Monica knew she needed him back. 

Schmitt's plan to bomb the world into submission was far from foolproof, and whilst he devoted all of his time and attention to the Valkyrie, Zola had been quietly commissioning other departments to plan more subtle alternatives to take control. Hydra would not die with Schmitt. Cut off one head, two more will grow. They began to extract their eggs from the third reich basket and set about embedding agents into all of the world's foremost intelligence agencies: USA, Great Britain, Russia. They took no chances, whatever happened after the war, Hydra wanted a hand in every pot. If Captain America had taught them anything, it was that the right man in the right place was worth more than an army. 

So they set a trap. A trap to kill Captain America and capture the sergeant. A trap to let Zola fall into American hands from where he would be able to influence the Americans from the inside. It almost worked. They didn’t account for the sergeant’s tenacity. He picked up the shield rather than surrendering; and got himself blasted from the train. 

Monica had a search team scouring the mountainside within hours. She knew his enhanced physiology would have let him survive the fall, but even he couldn’t survive long exposed to the cold of the mountains; even he could bleed out if they didn’t find him in time. 

They found him in freezing river, his arm mangled below his shoulder, his metabolism slowed, the cold actually keeping him alive. 

Monica rounded up the best surgeon in the Swiss province and held him at gun point as he operated on the sergeant’s arm; removing the infected skin and reducing the risk of sepsis. Only then did she defrost him to discover the final miracle; his memory was gone. Implanting false memories on a clean slate would be a breeze. She had her super soldier at last. But which memories to give him? What identity would serve him best, to cripple America and cause chaos? 

She remembered the stories of the red army, tales of Russian sleeper assassins and spies. Monica grinned down at her frozen soldier; with their training and her serum, the sergeant would be unstoppable


	7. Alps 1945 / Switzerland 1947

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky falls. Eventually Steve finds him.

_Bucky - Alps, 1945_

Bucky had never been fond of heights. He’d ride the rollercoasters at Coney Island, sure. He’d sit with his feet dangling off their building’s fire escape and feel his heart swoop and his feet tingle as he looked down at the drop below. But he could see the bolts and screws that held them together, he understood the mechanics, and he was pretty sure he could catch himself if he fell. Besides, the comforting weight of Steve’s thigh brushing against his, their hands clasped together with the excuse of adrenaline and fear; even if Bucky did have that dizzying vertigo fear of heights, he was pretty sure he’d endure it if Steve asked him too. 

No, what scared him as seeing those workmen swing around on iron girders of the sky scrapers that clawed their way towards the clouds; sitting out on beams to eat their lunch with nothing but a thousand foot drop beneath them. God, it made him feel queasy and his toes clench in his boots just thinking about it. Looking down at the snowy ravine awoke that same sense of fear in Bucky’s core. It was primal, instinctive. Something at the back of his mind that screamed danger and begged him to take a step back.

“Do you remember when I made you ride the cyclone at Coney Island?” Bucky glanced at Steve rather than looking down at the drop or the impossibly fine zip wire that would carry them across it.

“Yeah, and I threw up?” Steve grinned back. All over Bucky’s shoes, no less. Not that Bucky had cared, not even if it had meant they’d wasted all that money on hotdogs for nothing.

“This isn’t payback, is it?”

“Now, why would I do that?” Steve just fluttered his long eyelashes and smiled in mock bashfulness. It pulled tight on the strings of Bucky’s heart.  _Because you’re a cocky sonofabitch, because you love to tease. And I love it really. Because I love you._ It was on the tip of Bucky’s tongue so he clamped his mouth shut and shook his head. A strange anxiety gnawed in the pit of his stomach, a fear that they were running out of time. Bucky put it down to usual pre-mission nerves and tried not to think on it.

“Better get moving, bugs,” Dugan said and Bucky had the sinking feeling that he’d lost time and missed some crucial part of a conversation again. He stared back at Steve who gave him a reassuring smile, and Bucky tried to ground himself and focus. Now was hardly the time to worry about what they hydra woman had done to his head; they had far bigger problems.

The zipwire held and Bucky dropped onto the train, feet tingling as he crept forwards along the rickety surface. 100 mile an hour winds whipped past his face and a dizzying drop off the cliff edge speed below them. They entered through a hatch, and then everything went wrong.

=

Bucky thought he knew pain. He thought he’d weathered the worst he could face strapped to that table in god-knows-where. But when his hand grasped the broken railing and his arm was wrenched, ripped, torn from it’s socket, Bucky thought again. Pain seared through the ripped fibres of his arm and his hand felt like a distant memory. He knew his fingers were gripped around the bent pole, he could see them, and although he swung freely out over the ravine he wasn’t falling anymore. His heart hammered wildly, like it knew he was about to die and was trying to get in it’s fair share of heart beats in before he did. Because he was going to die. Of that Bucky was certain. The realisation settled over him like a cold sweat. He’d been fairly sure once or twice during the war, but this time certainty dropped into the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. His hand couldn’t hold forever. Even if could, the railing would soon give out.

“Bucky!” Steve’s agonised voice tore through the wind. Bucky fixed his eyes on Steve. He wanted to call out,  _it’s okay. I love you. Don’t do anything stupid_ . But his brain couldn’t process the words. They’d only be lost in the wind and the roar of the train anyway.

“Hold on!” Steve was reaching for him. “Grab my hand!” there were tears in his eyes. Funny, that’s what got to Bucky the most. Not that was dying, but that Steve was crying for him.

_Don’t cry, Stevie. I’m not worth all that._

The railing shook and groaned ominously. Bucky kept his eyes on Steve, fixing the image in his memory. Blue eyes, blonde hair, broken nose. He wanted Steve’s face to be the last thing he saw. Wanted it burned into his brain for an eternity.

The railing broke.

Bucky fell.

=

Rushing. Tumbling. Falling. His heart in his mouth. Stomach left behind on the train. Blood pumping behind his ears. Breath pulled from his lungs. Sheer panic. Pure adrenaline. Everything felt fizzy, fast and frantic.

He needed to grab hold of something to stop his fall, but there was nothing to grasp. His hands snatched at empty air as the train, and Steve, receded from view.

Then, something solid.

He smashed into the side of the cliff and felt his ribs shatter on impact. Bucky couldn’t feel his hand, he didn’t know if it was still capable of obeying commands but he willed himself to grab hold of something, groping desperately at the air and the mountainside. It must have worked because he slowed, if only for a moment, before pain like nothing he’d ever felt before tore through his already dislocated arm.

If he had any breath left in his lungs, Bucky would have screamed. His shoulder was on fire, every fibre of his arm felt like it had been ripped and torn. He was falling again. This time he blacked out.

=

He came to in a river. Icy and cold. His mind was fogged with pain. Everything hurt. Why wasn’t he dead yet? Bucky couldn’t feel his arm. But then, he couldn’t feel his toes, or his nose. Dimly, at the back of his mind, he knew that something awful had happened, but he couldn’t bring himself to look. He only knew that he needed to move. That if he stayed in the river he was as good as dead. With blurred, double vision, he peered in front of him and saw trees swaying and dancing not too many yards away. If he could reach the tree line he could find shelter until the others came to look for him.

He hoped they’d come to look for him.

Bucky crawled from the stream. His breath hung in an icy cloud before his face. His limbs were sodden and heavy. Everything ached and pain flared with every movement but he had to get to the trees. He crawled on his belly, pulling himself forwards with his right arm, pushing with his knees. The trees inched closer. Slowly. Too slowly. Bucky blacked out before he was half way there.

=

Voices. Muffled, foreign. Bucky was jostled sending fresh pain seared through him followed by a wave of nausea.  That would be a concussion , some dim corner of his mind thought. The voices were bundled up in white coats lined with fur. They lifted him onto a stretcher, or was it a sled? And soon he found himself being dragged through the snow. It left a train of red smeared in their wake.

Funny. It looked just like blood.

=

Bright lights. Too bright. Pain. Cold. Bucky gasped and shuddered, feeling himself slip into shock. Foreign voices gabbled around him. Bucky was too delirious to translate. Someone pressed a mask over his face and he felt gas seep into his lungs. Something sharp was stuck into his right arm and everything went hazy and black.

=

He dreamed of reg flags, angry men, towns burning. They spoke to him in Russian, but their voices were Italian and German. They called him: солдат. Soldier. They called him the Fist of Hydra. Told him he would be a Russian asset. But if he was Russian, why did he think in English? 

They spoke of a new arm. Strange. What was wrong with his old one? And in between everything: ice; cold; darkness. He tried to remember his life before, but nothing came. Why didn't he remember his name? Surely he must have a name, everyone had a name - or a number. Snatches. 32557... Pain spiked in his temple, it hurt to think, but there was something lurking at the back of his mind, buried in the depths of his clouded memories. Something that gleamed like a coin submerged in a muddy puddle. He reached for it. 32557.... Barnes. Yes, that was it. Barnes. James Buchanan. Bucky. There was a train. A sheid. Endless snow. Blue eyes, blonde hair, a broken nose. Someone named Steve.

##  *** 

_Steve - Switzerland, 1947_

“Bucky!” Steve gasped and staggered into the room with his sleeve clamped over his mouth. He faltered over Bucky's body, hand fretting, scared to touch. 

Bucky was frozen in a coffin of ice like a horrible twisted parody of snow white. Hair dark like ebony, longer than it had been when he fell from the train, skin deathly pale and tainted blue by the glow of crackling tesseract powered equipment that refracted through the ice. His eyes were closed and his mouth pressed into a narrow line. Steve wished it would be as easy as waking him with a kiss, but of course it was far more complicated than that. 

"Steve?" 

"Cap?" 

Peggy and Dugan sounded horribly confused. Right, the gas. Steve pulled himself back to his senses and scanned the room quickly, spotting the gas spilling from a sinister looking machine in the corner. He shoved an important looking red lever up against the wall and the machine spluttered to a halt. The gas dissipated and the shock on Peggy and Dugan's faces was palpable. 

"We found him." Steve's voice was ragged from more than just adrenaline. "But he's on ice."

Peggy took a few hesitant steps into the room as Dugan lifted his rifle and stationed himself by the door. 

"I've got the door," Dugan nodded at Steve. "Go get him." 

Peggy gave an audible gasp when she saw Bucky, and from the incredulity on her face, Steve realised that up until that point she hadn't quite believed him. 

"You didn't believe me," 

"I wanted to," she assured him, glancing up at Steve. "That's why I'm here. It just… sounded very farfetched." 

"Peg," Steve had to laugh, though it was chocked and stilted. "My whole life has been rather farfetched." 

"Roger that." Peggy smirked and turned her attention back to Bucky. "We can't take him like this." She said, her emotions pulled under control in her typically brisk fashion. 

"We need to thaw him out." Steve agreed. 

"Any idea how this thing works?" 

"Some." 

The cryochamber was covered in dials and switches, but not nearly as many as had adorned the side of Tony's coffee machine back in the Stark Tower. Steve had gotten pretty good at navigating 21st century technology, he wasn't sure anything from the forties could phase him anymore. 

As Steve began to examine the dials and switches, tracing the tubes and wires that fed into the chamber, and into Bucky, Peggy pulled a clipboard from the foot of the chamber and began to scan the documents. 

"No instructions," she said as she sped-read. "My Italian's a little rusty, but it looks like a shipping manifest. They're preparing to send him to Russia." She glanced up at Steve. "Next week. Did you know?" 

"Not exactly," Steve replied, distracted. He thought he had a handle on how the contraption worked, but it was a risk thawing Bucky out like this. If he got the sequence wrong he could end up giving Bucky brain damage - worse than whatever Hydra had already done to him. "I knew they were moving him soon." 

"No wonder you were so frustrated." Peggy tutted under her breath. "Bloody hell, why didn't you  tell me?" 

"You had enough things to worry about," Steve pushed around her to check the other side of the machine. "It wasn't a problem yet, we're here aren't we?" Clearly Nick Fury's policy of compartmentalisation had had more of an effect on Steve than he'd like to admit. He hadn't entirely understood the document he'd found in Zola's office, Italian not being one the lanugages he was remotely fluent in, but he'd thought they looked like transport papers, dated December 1947, and signed with a flourish by someone named Monica Rappaccini. 

"Not that I'm questioning your judgement," Peggy said, in a tone that implied she was doing just that, "but you had a  time machine,  why not come back months ago?" 

"I meant to." Steve hurried back around the machine and began to carefully turn up the dials. He was supposed to have come back to August 1947, a date etched into the annals of SHIELD history as Peggy and Howard attended a meeting at SSR to discus extending the department's operations in a post-war world. A date when Steve had known for sure Peggy would be in the city. "I was under duress when I set the date," he admitted, glancing across at Peggy to give her a sheepish glance. "Someone was shooting at me. Be glad I made it to the right year at all." 

Peggy laughed. They were buried deep in a Hydra compound, faced with an impossible task and terrible odds, and Peggy managed to laugh at Steve's foolishness. He felt himself smiling in return. 

"I supposed it's lucky you didn't end up in 1794, or something preposterous. Captain America and the Founding Fathers; now there's a radio show I might actually want to listen to. We should pitch it to the stations," she grinned. 

"Maybe when we get home." Steve grinned back. "Right, I think I have this figured. On my mark - turn that dial all the way up and hit the switch. Then standby for things to go haywire. Ready? Three, two, one, go." He did the same on his side of the machine and all at once it began to hum and whur in a different pitch. The ice cracked and liquid flowed from the tubes. Steve's breath caught in his chest as he watched, tensed and desperate for Bucky to wake. "Be ready, we don't know what mindset he'll be in." 

Peggy gave a curt nod, her eyes transfixed on Bucky's form. Hope began to bloom in Steve's chest; but hope can be cruel. Just when Steve was beginning to think they were going to be home free, an electric crackle broke the stillness behind them and Steve sensed they weren't alone. He was turning before he heard her voice, pulling his pistol from it's holster and holding it unwavering, trained directly at her head before his eyes caught up with his reflexes.

"Captain America." The woman said in a low voice, laced with a thick Italian accent. She looked mid-thirties, dressed in black combat fatigues with a heavy duty utility belt that glowed blue with an unmistakable aura of tesseract power. Was there anything Hyrda hadn't tried to power with it? The nametape across her right breast identified her as M. Rappaccini. The woman from the file. 

"I wondered if you'd come. The news reels said you died, but I knew better than to believe them." 

Steve glanced at the door, Dugan's outline still patrolled the corridor and Steve hadn't noticed another way into the room, where the hell had she come from? 

"Who are you?" Peggy demanded, her own rifle pointed directly at Monica's heart. 

"Ah, English. You must be the infamous Peggy Carter. You've become quite a nuisance." Monica brought out her own weapon, a sleek black hand gun which she aimed and fired in one smooth motion, before Steve could even think to stop her. Peggy crumpled with a strangled gasp and Steve heard himself screaming. 

"PEGGY!" He hesitated, torn between rushing at Monica and rushing to Peggy's aid, the hairsplit moment of indecision proved fatal. He steadied his grip and aimed at the woman's head, aiming to kill. She laughed and her outline wobbled with an electric crackle. The bullet sailed right through the air where she'd stood milliseconds before. The bullet pigned off the wall and Steve gawped, until a blinding, stinging pain cut through the back of his knee. His leg buckled and he crashed to the floor, rolling to see that Monica had materialised behind him. 

"Dugan!" he shouted for backup, but Monica slammed her hand into a button on the wall and solid shutter fell from the ceiling to block the door. 

Dugan hammered his fists against the shutters, but they barely rattled. "Cap!" Steve heard him empty a his clip against the steel, and heard the bullets clatter uselessly to the floor. 

"Get out of here!" Steve tried to yell to him. There was no use Dugan getting caught up in this too. Hopefully he'd have the sense to rendevouz with the others, or find another way to get to them. Steve didn't care if he got left behind, but not  Peggy . He crawled towards her, ignoring the dull pain that throbbed through his blown-out knee. She was sprawled on her back, breathing and barely conscious, a bullet was lodged in her left shoulder, just below her collar bone. Not a fatal shot - not if Steve managed to find medical treatment quickly. He gathered Peggy's hands and pressed them against her wound. 

"Hold tight," he told her. "You'll be okay." 

"How quaint." Monica smirked above them. 

This time, Steve didn't hesitate, he lunged up from his good knee and used one hand to bat the handgun from Monica's grip, sending her shot wide, whilst his other hand came up to grab her by the throat. He surged forwards until she crashed against the wall. But far from looking scared, she looked delighted. Steve frowned and tightened his grip. 

"You're going to help us get out here." he growled at her, but Monica just smiled and shook her head. Her eyes locked with something behind Steve, but before he could register with  what , a hand grabbed hold of his collar and threw him away from Monica with unnatural strength. Steve crashed into the far wall, sending shelves clattering to the floor and staggered back to his feet to see Bucky looming above him, sporting an earlier model of his lethal metal arm. 

"Bucky." Steve exhaled, catching his breath. 

Bucky frowned and glared at him. "Who the hell is Bucky?" 

And,  oh , Steve wanted to laugh and cry. He felt another piece of his fragile heart fracture and fall away, as his face crumpled into despair. He was too late, again. It was nothing less than he'd expected, but it didn't make it any easier. "You are." Steve urged. "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes." Steve had done this once. He could do it again. He'd do it forever if he had to. 

Confusion and anger blared behind Bucky's eyes. His hair was dripping with icy melt water and it hung forwards over his face, sending little rivulets of water running into his eyes and clinging to his lashes. 

"You were born in Indianna, raised in Brooklyn. You're my best friend, the bravest man I ever knew -" 

Bucky cut off Steve's speech with a blow from his metal fist. Behind them Monica sneered. 

"It's no use, Captain. He doesn't remember you. He can't. He is the Soldier now. A Russian asset. The fist of Hydra. He's going to change the world. Starting with you." 

Bucky hit him again and Steve felt something crack in his jaw. He spat blood onto the floor and brought his eyes back up to Bucky. He ignored Monica and focused on those blue eyes under a creased brow. Eyes which had seen Steve through most of the darkest times in his life. "You know me." Steve told him, using as soft and unthreatening tone as he could. 

"Сдерживать его." Monica ordered. Steve's Russian was far from fluent, and Monica's inflection was far from perfect, but he'd picked up enough working alongside Natasha for ten years.  Restrain him.

Bucky hesitated, and that was all the opening Steve needed. 

"You have a little sister, Rebecca Barnes. You used to braid her hair." Steve pressed gently, feeling his own memories flooding his brain, even if it stirred nothing in Bucky's mind. She was tweleve years younger than Bucky, but Bucky had been the most doting older brother anyone could wish for. She'd been eight years old when their had father died and she'd moved back to Indianna with their mother, leaving Bucky in the city with Steve. Steve had looked her up in 2012, when the dust had settled after New York and he realised he was stuck in the future for the long term. She'd died in 2007, aged 78. The local newspaper had written her a glowing obituary and there was a bench dedicated to her memory in Brown Country State Park. Steve had to clamp his mouth shut to stop all of that from spilling out of him too. 

Bucky's confusion deepened, his eyes looked almost pleading, but his jaw remained set. He grabbed Steve by the collar and hauled him up so he was forced to press his weight onto his still healing knee. 

"Сдерживать его." Monica ordered again. 

Bucky's metal hand twitched by his side. 

"We used to hitch rides down to Coney Island and spend our train money on hotdogs. You made me ride the cyclone and I threw up all over your shoes." Steve continued, unfazed. If Bucky had remembered him after seventy years of brainwashing, surely he'd remember him now. 

"Солдаты. Подчиниться."

Bucky hit Steve again, a sharp back hand across his face that sent blood and snot flying from a broken nose. He shifted his grip to clench his hand around Steve's throat instead. The pressure was intense and Steve gasped for air, but Bucky was using his flesh hand so the choke hold wasn't lethal. 

"She's brainwashing you, pal." Steve wheezed."She's tried to take your memories, but they're still there. I know they are. You know me." He began to see spots in his vision as he felt his oxygen run out. 

"I didn't take his memories, Captain. The cold did that when he fell from the train. I've simply given him a purpose. And now I have two super soldiers. Captain America, no less. Think of all the ways we can use you to bring down America's rotten empire."

"Bucky…" 

Something flickered behind Bucky’s eyes. His grip loosened, just enough to let Steve breathe. His brow pulled tight in confusion as the anger left his face and recognition dawned in his eyes. Monica didn't notice the change. She sneered down at Steve, slinking around Bucky to grab a fistful of Steve's hair and pull his head back, baring his throat further to Bucky's grip. 

“Bucky…”

“...Steve?” 

It was such a tentative sound, almost lost over the haggard noises of Steve struggling to breathe, but to Steve it rang clear as a bell. Warmth spread through his chest and his heart soared.

“Yes,” he gasped. Bucky’s grip vanished from his throat and before either Steve or Monica knew what was happening, Bucky’s metal hand was twisted in Monica’s hair. He threw her face first onto the group and punched the back of her head, knocking her out cold. Bucky seemed to move on instinct and reflexes alone, becuase once the threat was elminated he stood, stock still, breathing harshly, and staring down at his hands in confusion.

“Where..? What..?” he noticed his metal fingers and blanched, twisting his arm and grasping at the metal sholder joint in horror. “My arm… the fuck?” his eyes went wide and his began to hyperventilate. 

Still gasping for air Steve struggled to his feet and caught Bucky’s hands, pulling them close to his chest and rubbing soothing circles into Bucky’s wrists. 

“You’re okay. We’re in Switzerland. You fell from the train and you were captured. But you’re okay now. I’m here. It’s okay. Breathe with me, nice and slow,” Steve soothed him, battling his instinct to bundle Bucky up in his harms and smother the top of his head with kisses. “Breathe in, two, three four, and out, two, three, four…” he coached Bucky’s breathing until it began to even out. “You’re okay, keeping beathing. I need to check on Peggy, okay?” Steve slowly extracted his hands and watched Bucky for a moment before he sped across the room and crashed to his knees on the floor beside Peggy. 

She was still bleeding profusely and her grip had slacked, leaving no pressure on the wound. She was pale and battling to stay concious. 

“Oh, Pegs.” 

“Steve?”

“Shush, don’t try to talk. You’re gonna be okay.” he tore off his jacket and ripped it into strips, balling a wad of fabric over the wound and pressing it tight. He flinched as Peggy cursed in pain, but he held fast, wrapping lenghts of material around her chest and over her shoulder to keep the wadding secure. It was a patchy fix at best, but it should stop her from bleeding out.

“At least you’ll have a matching set,” Steve tried to lighten the mood, referring to the scar on Peggy’s right shoulder that she’d received from a wayward piece of shrapnel outside of a nazi occupied French town in 1944. 

She tried to laugh but the movement jostled her shoulder and caused more pain.

“Okay, don’t try to laugh. Sorry. We’ve got Bucky, we’re going to get out of here now, okay?”

She murmed agreement and Steve slung her left arm over his shoulder, gently helping Peggy to her feet. He secured his arm round her waist and took all of her weight, leaving her toes to basically just brush against the floor. Not an ideal position to carry her in, but he needed to keep her shoulder elevated and at least it left his left arm free to punch their way of the facility. He manouevered around as smoothly as possible, to find Bucky kneeling in the exact same position he’d left him. If Steve didn’t think Bucky would throttle him if he tried, Steve would have slung Bucky over his other shoulder and had done with it; but he knew Bucky was still in a very delicate state of mind. He had to be more careful. 

“Bucky,” he gently placed his hand on Bucky’s shoulder to pull him from his reverie. “C’mon, lets go.” He hooked his hand under Bucky’s bicep and helped him to his feet, considering their situation. How they were going to get out of the facility when every alarm had no doubt been sounded, Steve had no idea. He didn’t even know what had happened to Dugan. Steve consulted the mental map he’d made of the facility and guessed they were in the north west corner; a long way from the hatch they’d entered through, but close to the transport shed and the main gate. Steve could only hope the trucks were armoured. Guiding Bucky with a firm, but hopefully comforting grip on his flesh arm, Steve walked the three of them towards the shuttered door. 

With his concentration split between the two of them, and trying to plan their escape, it was easy to ignore Monica lying splumped in the corner. Still, he should have known better. A bullet bit into thigh and Steve stumbled forwards, almost sending the three of the crashing to the ground. Thankfully Peggy still possessed some sense of awareness and whilst Steve ground his teeth through the pain and focused on staying upright, she grabbed his pistol from the holster by his hip and used the last reserves of her strength to turn and fire back at Monica. The air crackled with a charge of blue energy and Monica disappeared, but not before she let out a howl of pain as Peggy’s shot found its mark, slightly wide of centre, but still grazing Monica’s arm with a wound not many people would be able to ignore. 

Peggy let the pistol fall to the floor and slumped against Steve’s side. 

“She….” Bucky stuttered, staring at the empty air when Monica had stood before. “What in the hell?” His eyes were blown wide and whole body was trembling. He looked like he was walking through a waking nightmare; Steve knew how he felt.

“Yeah.” Steve agreed. He struggled to stand on his injured leg, faltered and almost dropped Peggy. There was no other choice, he could only apologise profusely and hope he wasn't exacerbating her injury as he slung her over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. He securing her leg and arm around his shoulders with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to slam into the button that released the shutters. Wincing through the pain he took a cautious step forwards and surveyed the corridor outside. There was no sign of Dugan - but the crackle and splutter of machine gun fire up ahead told them he hadn’t gone far. 

Steve crept down the corridor, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Bucky was following close behind. They reached a junction and found a trail of Hydra bodies slumped against the concrete floor. Steve used his foot to kick a rifle into the air, caught it and handed it to Bucky, finding one for himself from a body further down the corridor. 

"This way." It got easier to walk with every step, the serum must have been working overtime to knit his bullet wounds together. He'd have to worry about digging any bullet fragments out again later. 

More bodies littered a breakout room further down the corridor; Dugan had been busy. They passed a busted door which revealed an ammo cache, and Steve and Bucky silently filled their pockets with extra ammunition and grenades. It was almost like old times, except for the scared rabbit-in-headlights look thst haunted Bucky's eyes. 

Around the next corner they found Dugan, holding two rapid-fire rifles with a grenade launcher strapped across his back. Three Hydra guards were backing him into a corner when Bucky picked them off with three precise shots. They crumpled like puppets with their strings cut, and Dugan let out a shuddering sigh of relief. 

"Hey, Sarge, am I glad to see you." Duagn grinned at Bucky who grunted in reply. "I was coming back for you, Cap, I swear." 

"I know. Any idea how we get out of here?" 

"Main door's up ahead," Dugan nodded down the corridor towards a door which had been barricaded with rifle slung through the door handles. "But it's chaos out there."

"There must be a side door, or another vent," Steve glanced up at the ceiling, circling and scanning, hoping another door might materialise out of thin air. 

"There is." Bucky spoke up, with a voice thick like treacle. "I." the words seemed heavy on his tongue and his brow creased like he couldn't figure out how he knew. "This way." 

They followed him unquestioningly round one, two, three twists and turns until he ripped through a door into a disused office and dragged the desk across the floor. Climbing onto the desk Bucky pulled a grate from the ceiling to reveal something that looked like a submarine hatch. He used both hands to turn the locking mechanism and pushed the hatch up. Whatever was above it, was dark as no light spilled through. He placed a hand either side and jumped up through the opening. A moment later his metal hand reached back through to help them up. 

Steve and Dugan shared a look, but they had little option other than trusting Bucky. Steve let Dugan go first, still awed by the strength in Bucky's metal arm as it pulled Dugan cleanly through the opening. He passed Peggy up next, and then let himself be pulled through. Steve held his eyes wide as they adjusted to the gloom and he realised they were in the transport shed, surroundings by serious looking machines. Steve grinned. 

Maybe they were getting out of here after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated! 
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://trenchcoatsandtimetravel.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/JJK_Captain), come say hi and cry over headcanons with me.


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